Volume 8, Number 17
Friday, April 25, 2008

BIGOTRY MONITOR

A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe

EDITOR: CHARLES FENYVESI
(News and Editorial Policy within the sole discretion of the editor)

Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union
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Russia’s powerful Ministry of the Interior has weighed in on the debate on the grave dangers posed by the growth of extremism. Its statements suggest proprietary interest in the subject. But not everyone in the government is in agreement on the numbers of far-rights activists and their significance.

1. RUSSIA’S INTERIOR MINISTRY RAISES ALARM OVER EXREMIST CRIME SURGE. In big cities across Russia, skinheads have recently organized a number of "flash mobs," and more than 40 people have been killed as a result, Igor Sundiyev, chief researcher at the Interior Ministry's All-Russian Scientific Research Institute, told a Moscow conference on extremism on April 22, as reported by the state news service Itar-Tass. (Acting on instructions posted on the Internet, flash mob participants who do not necessarily know one another gather in a specific location to carry out a prearranged action.)

Sundiyev said that the flash mobs were organized between December 2007 and March 2008. The participants met through special web sites and forums on the Internet, agreed on the venue for their next "sortie," and discussed how they would be armed and dressed. "These young people would get together, then go and attack the first passers-by on their way who do not look Slavic, beat them up, and then quickly disperse," Sundiyev said. He disclosed that 20 participants in skinhead groups have been detained and criminal cases have been opened against them. In total, about 300 people took part in the flash mobs.

According to an Interior Ministry press release circulated at the conference, in the first two months of 2008 alone 58 extremist crimes were registered, an increase of 10% over the same period last year.

He cited statistics showing that every year extremist crimes are growing. "If in 2005, 152 such crimes were recorded, last year there were 2.5 times more--356," the press release said. The number of people involved in these crimes has been increasing, as well; last year their number went up by a third. In 2007 more than 400 illegal events were carried out and administrative proceedings were instituted against about 1,500 people, according to the Interior Ministry.

Nowadays extremism "is posing an unprecedented danger to the public and is linked to radicalism and terrorism; also, the scale and mobility of extremist activities are growing and its geography is expanding," the press release announced. Itar-Tass cited experts to the effect that the organizers aim at gathering a large number of people and use different forms, including both conventional attacks and flash mobs. The experts also warned that leaders of extremist groups and their sponsors abroad will continue attempts to destabilize the sociopolitical situation in Russia.

According to the independent news agency Interfax, Interior Ministry experts regard Satanists as more dangerous than radical Islamists. "Usually Islamic extremism is seen as religious extremism in Russia, but this is not the case. It is not Islamists but representatives of Satanist sects and similar organizations that pose a particular danger," Sundiyev was quoted as saying. He added that Satanist organizations exist mainly in big cities and they are often linked to extremist organizations and use their services.

Sundiyev said that about 1,500 new religious organizations are registered in Russia every year and 300-to-400 of them are later identified as extremist and are banned.

2. ‘EXTREMISM POSES GREATER THREAT THAN TERRORISM.’ Speaking at the same Moscow conference, Yuriy Antonyan, identified as a chief researcher at the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of the Interior Ministry, said that extremism is currently posing a greater danger for Russia than terrorism "since it has acquired a larger scale." Antonyan warned: "Unless required measures are taken, extremism will turn into terrorism. Civil society institutions have not yet organized themselves to repulse extremism." He also called attention to “burgeoning fascism based on various negative phenomena, including antisemitism."

As for the origins of extremism, the institute’s director, Sergey Girko, argued that the gap between rich and poor was the main cause of extremist sentiments in society. "The difference between the rich and the poor strikes one in the eye, and there is no doubt it encourages growing protest manifestations," he said.

3. KRASNODAR PROSECUTOR WORRIED ABOUT RISING EXTREMISM. The chief aide to the Prosecutor's Office of the Krasnodar Region, a Russian province known for its high levels of xenophobia, publicly expressed concern about a rise in the number of extremist crimes there, according to an April 11 report by the RIA-Novosti news service. Aleksandr Ryumin stated at a press conference that while in 2005 the Prosecutor's Office only began only one investigation into a crime motivated by extremism, in 2006 there were five such investigations, in 2007 six, and there have already been two this year. Ryumin characterized the efforts of law enforcement agencies to counter extremism "not always effective" and warned that "crimes committed by youths recruited by organized extremist groups present a threat to the region's public security." He listed a variety of far-right organizations operating in the region--the Russian National Unity, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (whose leader face! s extremism charges in Moscow), skinheads, and soccer hooligans--along with the National Bolsheviks (originally a neo-fascist organization that has moderated its stance over the years) and anarchists.

Ryumin criticized the local parliament for not approving funding for a program to prevent extremism and called upon the governor to push for its passage, noting that the region will host the Olympics in 2014 and needs to do a better job to control crime.

4. ST. PETERSBURG PROSECUTORS SAY HATE CRIMES NUMBERS DROP. While prosecutors in St. Petersburg say that the number of crimes motivated by ethnic or religious hatred has fallen this year, a local news web site reported a starkly different story. An April 14 report by the Fontanka.ru web site used statistics from the Prosecutor’s Office to reveal 16 attacks that could have been motivated by ethnic or religious hatred, only one of which actually resulted in hate crimes charges--and that is the one that local officials emphasize to show that the situation is actually improving. Of the 16 attacks this year, nine were murders. Eight of the victims were citizens of Uzbekistan, two from Azerbaijan, one from Ghana, and two were citizens of Russia belonging to ethnic minorities. The attacks all took place on the outskirts of the city and involved the use of knives. The author of the report acknowledged that the motives for some of the attacks are not clear, but as the report demonstrates, the hopeful spin the local authorities are putting on hate crimes statistics is an even more inadequate way to gauge the true dimensions of the problem of racist violence.

5. RUSSIAN PROSECUTORS SAY CUSTOMS OFFICIALS FAIL TO BLOCK EXTREMISM. In what the Prosecutor-General's Office of the Russian Federation called “gross violations of the requirements of customs legislation,” the Federal Customs Service has been excoriated for failing to set up groups to monitor of “materials in order to prevent the dissemination of extremist products on Russian territory," according to a press release by the Prosecutor-General's Office, as reported by Interfax on April 21. The Prosecutor's Office found that “the majority of customs bodies” were not using their powers to block “the import of printed and audio-visual materials aimed at promoting fascism and inciting social, racial, ethnic and religious strife.”

6. POLICE STANDS BY AS FAR-RIGHT RALLY THREATENS TERRORISM. At a rally of about 400 far-right nationalists in Moscow’s Triumph Square on April 19, speakers called for the murder of various government officials, praised terrorist methods, and demonized Jews, according to the national daily "Kommersant" dated April 21. The report noted that at a time when peaceful opposition demonstrations are routinely suppressed in Moscow through police violence and intimidation, the freedom that extremists routinely enjoy to rally calls into question the sincerity of those city and national leaders who have publicly called for inter-ethnic tolerance.

Rally participants included members of the National Great Power Party of Russia, the Union of Orthodox Standard Bearers, and the neo-Nazi Slavic Union ("SS" in its Russian abbreviation). They held signs condemning "Jewish fascism" and the "Jewish mafia" and calling on Slavic women to "guard the purity of your race." Speakers called for the release of Vladimir Kvachkov who was sentenced to prison for his role in an assassination plot against a government official, an ethnic Jew.

Olga Kasyanenko of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration called on Russians to "Arm yourself! Defend your families!" and concluded with the ultranationalist slogan "Russia for the Russians!" Another speaker called for nationalists to prepare for war. Leonid Simonovich, head of the Union of Orthodox Standard Bearers, read a poem envisioning the murder of several government officials through a terrorist bombing campaign. Nikolai Kuryanovich, a former State Duma deputy, also addressed the rally that blatantly violated Russia's laws against extremist activity by calling for the overthrow the constitutional structure of the state, and inciting ethnic hatred. Nevertheless, police reportedly did nothing in response.
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THREE RACIST ATTACKS SO FAR THIS YEAR IN TAMBOV. Law enforcement officials in the small town of Tambov, Russia have recorded three racist attacks in the region so far this year, according to the local newspaper "Naedine” dated April 16. In all three cases, prosecutors have brought hate crime charges, a rare deviation from the common practice of Russian law enforcement agencies to classify hate crimes as only "hooliganism."

On February 7, three young men assaulted a Zambian student near a night club. Police detained two suspects and confirmed their membership in a neo-Nazi group. On February 29, a police officer spotted two Zambian students fleeing two assailants, one of them armed with a metal pipe, screaming "Blacks out of Russia!" The officer detained one attacker who acknowledged his membership in a neo-Nazi group. On March 25, a group of youths attacked two Armenian men while shouting "Russia for Russians!" The attackers were dressed as neo-Nazis, and police have detained an unspecified number of suspects.

FIVE ARRESTED FOR RACIST MURDER. According to an Interfax report, five people have been arrested in Stavropol in southern Russia as suspects in the murder of an Azerbaijani national in November 2007. They are facing charges of causing premeditated bodily harm resulting in the death of the victim as well as inciting ethnic, racial, and religious enmity.

VLADIVOSTOK SYNAGOGUE VANDALIZED. On April 5, an unidentified person or persons daubed a swastika and antisemitic graffiti on the door of a synagogue in Vladivostok, Russia, according to an April 21 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. In their investigation, police are said to focus on local extremist groups.

This is the third time since October 2006 that the synagogue has been vandalized.

RARE HATE CRIME CONVICTION IN UKRAINE. For only the second time in Ukraine's post-Soviet history, a court sentenced defendants to prison for a hate crime, according to UCSJ's Kiev monitor Vyacheslav Likhachyov. On April 17, the Darnitsky district court in Kiev ended the trial of four suspects accused of murdering a Nigerian citizen last October. Kunuon Mievi Godi, 44, who lived for many years in Ukraine, was killed on the evening of October 25, 2006. Eyewitnesses reported that the attackers shouted racist slogans. The Nigerian, who is survived by a Ukrainian wife and a son, died of knife wounds before police arrived. He had a Ph.D. and worked for an oil company in the city.

The judge found one suspect guilty of first degree murder and incitement of ethnic hatred and sentenced him to 11 years in prison. A second defendant, a young woman, was convicted only of ethnic incitement and got four and a half years. A third defendant avoided prison through an amnesty, while yet another was treated as a witness.

Despite a rising number of attacks on ethnic minorities in Ukraine, until last week there had been only one successful hate crimes prosecution, and even in that case (the trial of several neo-Nazis who attacked a synagogue in Kiev while screaming "Death to the Yids!"), the chief organizer of the assault was let out of prison early.

VANDAL DETAINED FOR BREAKING ESTONIAN BAPTIST CHURCH’S WINDOW. Police detained a vandal who repeatedly broke windows at a Baptist church in Tallinn, Estonia, according to an April 19 report by the Baltic News Service. The church's pastor complained to the police, who set up an ambush and caught a suspect throwing a stone through the church's window at 4 in the morning. It is not clear from the report what charges the suspect faces or if religious hatred motivated him.

TURKMEN OFFICIALS RAID BIBLE CLASS. Some ten officials from the local Religious Affairs Department, the police, the secret police, the Justice Ministry, and the Tax Ministry raided a Bible class held by the Greater Grace Protestant church in a private apartment in the Turkmen capital Ashgabad on April 11, Forum 18 News Service reported on April 18. Asked the reason for the check-up, Murad Aksakov of the local administration told Forum 18 that the officials wanted to know how many people attended the classes, who those people were, and whether everything was in order with the church's documents.

Pastor Vladimir Tolmachev told Forum 18 that he was warned that the church was not allowed to teach its members without permission from the government's Religious Affairs Committee, even though its officially-recognized charter allows it. Officials told Tolmachev that he would soon receive an official warning and that additional warnings could lead to a denial of the church's registration and render all its activities illegal. The church has no building of its own and has had to move its services ten times this year.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, MASSACRE OF LONG AGO REMEMBERED * * * On April 22, a monument was inaugurated in Lisbon’s main square, the Rossio, commemorating the “Easter Massacre” five centuries ago. The inscription inside a marble Star of David says: ’’In memory of the thousands of Jews, victims of intolerance and religious fanaticism, assassinated on this square during the massacre initiated on the 19th of April 1506.’’ Those officiating at the inauguration included the cardinal and the mayor of Lisbon, as well as Rabbi Eliezer Shai di Martino and members of the Portuguese parliament and numerous civic organizations.

NEO-NAZIS CELEBRATE HITLER’S BIRTHDAY
No Sign of the Nazi Cult Losing Strength

The days before and after Adolf Hitler’s birthday, April 20, neo-Nazis mark the occasion by conducting themselves in ways that would please their dead Fuhrer. So far this year, only a few routine incidents have been reported in the former Soviet Union. But in the last incident, in a Ukrainian town that has been in recent months a focus of vicious antisemitic incidents, officials cooperated by defending a grave desecration with an explanation that would have made Yosif Stalin proud.

1. IN THREE DAYS, THREE NON-SLAVS KILLED IN RUSSIA. In the early hours of April 19, a Tajik national was killed in the town of Pushchino, Moscow Region, Interfax quoted a law enforcement source. “The body of a 25-year-old man with a knife wound in the chest was found on the third-floor staircase landing of a residential building," the source said. A local unemployed man, aged 38, was detained. He confessed that he had committed the murder "out of a sudden spell of xenophobia," according to the source.

Close to midnight of April 20 in Stavropol, a group of eight ethnic Russians attacked two people from the Caucasus, the Regnum news agency reported on April 22. Hiding behind facemasks, the Russians attacked a Chechen and an Ingush, stabbing the Chechen (a university student) to death and sending the Ingush to the hospital. In another part of the city that night, an Azeri man was hospitalized with stab wounds. Police are investigating the attacks as separate incidents and immediately released a statement categorically denying that ethnic hatred was a motive.

Also on April 20, a Chinese national came under an attack in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported, quoting a law enforcement source. A construction worker, 41, was taken to hospital with a knife wound. His condition is serious. A search for his attackers is under way, the report said. Another attack took place in Ryazan where a group of neo-Nazis assaulted an Uzbek man, according to the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The victim, 34, was taken to the hospital with head injuries.

On April 21, an Uzbek national was killed in Moscow Region, according to an Interfax report. The body of a 36-year-old man with a head injury was found in a forest near the railway station of Bakhchivandzhi. An investigation has been launched.

2. SWASTIKA FLAG APPEARS IN LITHUANIA. On April 20, a huge red banner with a swastika in the middle appeared on a wall of an abandoned house in Klaipeda, Lithuania's only seaport, the Lithuanian National Radio reported according to Interfax. Firemen removed the banner, the type of oversize decoration favored by German Nazi leaders. City police and officers of the Lithuanian department of state are investigating.

3. DOZENS OF SWASTIKAS DAUBED ON BELARUS HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL. Vandals daubed dozens of swastikas on a Holocaust memorial in Slutsk, Belarus, according to an April 21 report by the Belarusian opposition web site Kharitya 97. The memorial marks the site where the Nazis shot and burned to death 3,000 Jews in 1941. It is not clear from the report how local police are treating the incident. But local sources say that vandals of Jewish cemeteries and memorials in Belarus are rarely punished.

4. ANTISEMITIC VANDALISM IN UKRAINE. For the second time in six months, antisemitic vandals attacked a memorial over the grave of a famous local rabbi in Zhitomir, Ukraine, according to an April 17 report by the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru. During the night of April 15-16, unidentified individuals burned down the memorial over the grave of Rabbi Aharon and left behind some antisemitic graffiti. Police opened an investigation, but community leaders cited in the report were not optimistic because several local antisemitic crimes, including attacks on Jews, remain unsolved. They recalled that in November 2007, vandals daubed antisemitic graffiti inside the same memorial, but police refused to open an investigation, arguing that there was "an absence of a crime."

Jewish leaders have called on law enforcement agencies to end repeated vandalism in the Jewish cemetery, according to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency item on April 21.

But an April 22 report posted on Jewish.ru reported that police and SBU (former KGB) investigators announced to the press that they “solved the incident.” They claimed it was an accident rather than arson. Their explanation was nothing short of amazing. Three teenagers were playing soccer near the cemetery and lit a fire on the cemetery grounds in order to warm up. The fire got out of a control and burned down the memorial. The youths face no charges.

The officials did not mention anything about the graffiti left behind. Given a little more time, they may come up with an explanation.
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