Union of Councils for Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 18

News

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 18

(May 2, 2008)

Volume 8, Number 18
Friday, May 2, 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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BELARUS IS ASKED TO RELEASE U.S. LAWYER. On April 25, U.S. Consul Caroline Savage visited in a Minsk, Belarus jail the American lawyer Emanuel Zeltser, the local Belapan news agency reported. Zeltser told her that he had been beaten on the second and third days of his detention. She added that Zeltser lost weight and was very weak and had difficulty walking and talking. In Washington, the Belarusian charge d'affaires was summoned to the Department of State that called for Zeltser’s release “on humanitarian grounds.” In Minsk, the U.S. embassy pointed out that almost a month had passed since they were permitted to visit him. (The first visit took place on March 27.)

Zeltser and his secretary Vladlena Funk were detained upon their arrival in Minsk on March 12. They are charged with using fake documents. According to their lawyer, the case has the status of a state secret.

In a letter to Belarusia’s prosecutor general, UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, expressed “extreme concern” with reports to the effect that Zeltser has been placed in involuntary confinement in a psychiatric institution and was physically abused by police. Signed by UCSJ’s president Larry Lerner and executive director Micah H. Naftalin, the letter requested Zeltser’s release from psychiatric detention and an investigation of allegations of abuse and a determination of the extent of his injuries. The letter emphasized that Zeltser’s diabetes makes it crucial that he and Ms. Funk be released on humanitarian grouns.

The letter recalled that involuntary placement in a psychiatric facility was “an especially horrific form of repression against dissidents during the Soviet period which resulted in an enormous amount of negative publicity around the world."

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As more news of the hate festival marking Adolf Hitler’s birthday come in, some Russian officials crack down on hate crimes while others continue to issue denials of the existence of neo-Nazi groups.

1. NEO-NAZIS MURDER RUSSIAN STUDENT, INJURE ANOTHER. In St. Petersburg, a group of neo-Nazis murdered a Russian student and injured another in an attack on April 20, Hitler's birthday, according to an April 27 posting on the web site Coalition Against Hate. Denis Ezdautskis and two other university students were attacked in Park Pobedy by assailants "screaming something about Hitler" according to a surviving victim, Egor Makarov, who managed to escape. According to his testimony, one of the neo-Nazis stabbed Ezdautskis in the chest and others captured a friend, identified only by his first name, Seryoga, and “busted his head.” Police detained seven suspects.

2. NEO-NAZIS STAB AND BEAT UZBEKS. About 10 youths dressed in black neo-Nazi uniforms beat and stabbed two Uzbek nationals on a Vladivostok suburban train, according to an April 25 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The masked extremists stabbed one victim five times and beat a passenger who defended the Uzbeks. The attackers then fled.

3. NIZHNY NOVGOROD POLICE LAUNCH OPERATION AGAINST EXTREMISTS. Police detained two youths after they attacked on April 18 an anti-fascist youth in Dzerzhinsk, in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod Region, according to an April 29 report by the local news service Novoe Telegrafnoe Agenstvo. The youths attacked after spotting anti-fascist tattoos on their victim. The Prosecutor's Office decided not to charge the suspects because they are under-aged.

In the days before and after Hitler's birthday, local police undertook a special operation aimed at cracking down on "informal youth groups"--a euphemism for neo-Nazis. They held "preventative conversations" with members of these groups in order to "prevent acts aimed at inciting ethnic hatred." The April 18 attack came to light as a result of these investigative efforts that also netted charges against 161 local youths, 40 of them members of "informal youth groups."

4. ’NO EXTREMIST GROUPS HERE,’ STAVROPOL OFFICIALS DECLARE. Officials in Russia's Stavropol Region reacted to the murder of an Ingush student on Hitler’s birthday (reported last week in this newsletter) by denying that extremist groups exist in the region, according to the local newspaper "Vecherny Stavropol" dated April 29. Last week, a government agency that works on ethnic minority issues held a meeting to discuss security measures for the upcoming May holidays and the recent murder of an Ingush student. The discussion generated heated exchanges between law enforcement officials denying ethnic hatred as a motive for the killing and minority community leaders who charged that the attack was a hate crime. Dzhamalay Esambaev, head of a local Chechen-Ingush community group, and Vitaly Tatarenko, first deputy of the city administration in charge of security issues, expressed opposite views. Tatarenko blamed unnamed forces wishing to destabilize the city. His view was echoed by the head of the local FSB (heir to the KGB).

Pavel Kolsenikov, deputy chief of the department of ethno-national relations, issued a categorical denial that "organized gangs of so-called skinheads" exist in the city, and asserted that inter-ethnic tension in the region, which borders on Chechnya, is much lower than in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He was contradicted by a representative of the Azeri community who stated that skinheads gather in the city's Mamayka district, an assertion that police denied.

The head of a local Cossack organization proposed a resolution of the problem of youth violence by granting greater police powers to Cossack paramilitary units. The newspaper failed to mention the fact that some Cossack organizations are explicitly racist and have been linked to anti-minority violence in the neighboring Krasnodar Region.

5. VANDALS STRIKE JEWISH CEMETERY NEAR ODESSA. A Jewish cemetery in the town of Bolgrad in Ukraine’s Odessa Region was vandalized, according to an April 25 report by the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru. The vandals damaged eleven gravestones sometime between April 20 and April 24.

6. HITLER DOLLS ON SALE IN UKRAINE. Hitler dolls reportedly are on sale in some supermarkets in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, according to an item by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) dated April 29. The action-figure doll stands more than a foot high and comes with movable arms to reproduce the infamous Nazi salute. Reportedly, the dolls will be mass marketed this summer. The manufacturer was not named in published reports, the JTA noted, adding that consumers will have a choice of outfits, such as “early days Adolf” sporting a brown shirt and jodhpurs, and “wartime Adolf” wearing a gray, double-breasted tunic, black trousers and the Iron Cross medal. The $200 price tag includes a spare head “with a kind expression on it,” according to London's “Daily Mail,” glasses, and several changes of clothes.

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FAR-RIGHT MARCH IN MOSCOW ENDS IN RACIST VIOLENCE. About 1,000 marchers participated in a pro-Serbia march in Moscow on Russian Orthodox Easter Sunday, April 27, according to an April 29 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Organized by the far-right Eurasian Youth Movement, the marchers held signs reading "Kill the Yankees and Those Who Love Yankees!", "Kosovo is Serbia!" and "Glory to the Empire--Russian, Stand Up!" as well as various slogans denigrating Ukraine. Far-right nationalists in Russia have extensive ties with Serbian politicians, including accused war criminals.

Marchers reportedly attacked a few dark-skinned men who walked behind the demonstration. The march featured State Duma deputy Maxim Mishchenko of the so-called Liberal Democratic Party and other politicians and activists, including some from Serbia. Police detained two organizers of the rally for allegedly presenting false information about the number of planned participants.

MOSCOW AGAIN BANS GAY PARADE. Moscow city authorities will not allow sexual minorities to hold unauthorized actions in the capital originally scheduled for May 1 and 2, the press service of the city mayor announced on April 24, according to the state news service Itar-Tass. "Just like in the previous years, [the city authorities] will thwart attempts to hold such events in a decisive and uncompromising manner, because the absolute majority of [Russian] society does not accept gay people's lifestyle and their philosophy," the statement said. "The fact that gay people have chosen the holiday of Peace and Labor to hold unauthorized actions causes surprise and indignation. On the days when a lot of manifestations will be taking place in Moscow, gay people want to deliberately bring discord and get in the way of the historical holiday. They are trying to impose their customs and principles on society.” The statement warned that similar events in the capital “will be thwarted in the future as well." Deputy Mayor Sergey Tsoy added that police have monitored death threats by far-right groups against gay activists and that such threats further justify the ban, implying that the city could not guarantee the marchers’ safety.

AUTHORITIES MAY HAVE PREVENTED ANTI-MIGRANT RIOT. Last week a commission on extremism in Russia’s far-north released a study on attempts by unnamed groups to stir up an anti-migrant riot in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, according to an April 25 item by the Rosbalt news agency. The authorities acted quickly to shut down an anti-migrant march when it started getting out of hand. They have since launched two criminal cases ("incitement of ethnic hatred" and "organization of mass disturbances") against marchers who gathered in the regional capital on October 6-7, 2007. One suspect remains behind bars awaiting trial. The report quoted a local migration official warning that uncontrolled migration to the region is creating ethnic tensions that could explode into violence. The far north of Russia contains home bases of multi-billion dollar oil and gas companies, and local authorities maintain a tight control.

TWO YOUTHS SENTENCED IN HATE CRIME CASE. A court in Nizhny Tagil in Russia’s Sverdlovsk Region sentenced two young men to four months and six months in prison, respectively, after finding them guilty of actions aimed at inciting ethnic hatred, according to an April 28 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. Sergey Suprikov and Leonid Diky were also fined 16,000 rubles for attacking a Kyrgyz man on June 12, 2007 after overhearing him speak Kyrgyz with a friend and demanding that he speak Russian. The youths spat in his face and then broke two bottles on his head. The victim managed to escape and police detained his suspected attackers.

JURY FINDS FOUR GUILTY OF KILLING 14 TRADERS AT A MOSCOW MARKET. A Moscow jury found four defendants guilty of setting a bomb in August 2006 that killed 14 foreign market traders at the Cherkizov market, according to an April 30 report by Interfax. The defendants were found guilty of terrorism, 14 murders (four of them children), and the attempted murder of the 61 people who were injured in the blast. The jury added that the defendants do not deserve a reduced sentence from the judge who is scheduled to announce the sentence on May 12.

One of the defendants was also found guilty of participating in the murder of an Armenian student at the Pushkinskaya metro station. The Interfax report added that the defendants, who total eight, also face charges of "participation in a criminal group" and weapons charges, along with exploding eight bombs around the city, including an attack on a mosque, but it is not clear from the report if they were found guilty of these charges. The report mentioned no hate crimes charges despite the clear intent on the part of the defendants to murder members of ethnic minorities.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, WARNINGS AND BOASTS BY LUKASHENKO * * * In his annual address to the nation on April 29, Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko warned that “some people want to split our national unity. [But] … we have no minorities; we have citizens of our republic. We do not and will not have racial cleavage. We are the most international country in the world. It’s immoral to force wedge between our citizens…. We should not let our monolithic society to be split apart by ethnical conflicts.”

U.S. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM GROUP DECRIES RISE OF RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA
Annual Report Paints a Bleak Picture

In its annual report released today, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), an independent and bipartisan federal agency, noted that in recent years some of the 56 member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) “have sought to curtail the organization’s human rights activities.” The report singled out Russia as having protested OSCE criticisms of countries of the former USSR while downplaying human rights problems in the West. Moreover, Russia has withheld approval for the OSCE budget, thus jeopardizing many of the OSCE’s human rights activities. “These activities are particularly important at a time when the governments of Russia and many other countries of the former Soviet Union are demonstrating an increasing lack of commitment to their human rights obligations, including efforts to combat racism, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance and discrimination,” the report pointed out. “In October 2007, Russia, purportedly aiming to ‘improve’ OSCE procedures, put forth several proposals that would have significantly increased government control over the civil society groups that could take part in OSCE meetings and activities, but the U.S. led a successful effort against this Russian proposal. The OSCE, citing an agreement made in Moscow in 1991, has reiterated that OSCE participating states have ‘categorically and irrevocably’ declared that the ‘commitments undertaken in the field of the human dimension of the OSCE are matters of direct and legitimate concern to all participating states and do not belong exclusively to the internal affairs of the state concerned.’”

1. RACIST AND XENOPHOBIC VIOLENCE RAMPANT IN OSCE REGION. The USCIRF report noted that the past few years have witnessed a rise in incidents of racist discrimination, xenophobia, and intolerance directed against members of religious and ethnic minorities in the OSCE region including Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, as well as such democratic countries as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The report stressed that extremist rhetoric that goes uncontested by political and societal leaders has led to intolerance of minorities. Antisemitic views and actions continue to be problems in many OSCE states and officials often fail to hold the perpetrators of antisemitic attacks to account. Anti-Zionism and vilification of Israel can also mask antisemitism. Many recent antisemitic incidents in Western Europe have been committed by marginalized young North African Muslim immigrants. In 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available, monitoring organizations reported twice as many physical assaults on Jews in comparison with 2005, with the largest increases in the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, along with a disturbing number of antisemitic incidents in Norway, Belgium, Germany, and Ukraine.

USCIRF identified skinhead gangs and neo-Nazi groups as sources of hate-filled rhetoric and violence in many OSCE countries, with migrants and various ethnic and religious minorities, including Muslims and Jews, as targets. “Vandalism against religious and other property is also on the rise,” USCIRF reported. “Violent acts are often well documented, but they are rarely investigated and prosecuted as hate crimes. Instead, officials, prosecutors, and judges often trivialize such violence by treating it as ‘hooliganism,’ particularly in Russia. When burnings, beatings, and other acts of violence target members of a particular group because of who they are and what they believe, such acts should be viewed not merely as police problems, but as human rights violations that require an unequivocal response.”

2. RUSSIA MUST COUNTER ‘SEVERE VIOLATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.’ Although USCIRF has not recommended that Russia be named a “country of particular concern” because of “most severe violations of religious freedom,” USCIRF “is concerned that the country’s increasingly fragile human rights situation, which directly affects the status of religious freedom, warrants close scrutiny, not least because Russia is a model and bellwether for other countries in transition, especially from the former Soviet Union.” In its role as an advisory agency, USCIRF recommended that the U.S. government urge the Russian government “to condemn specific acts of xenophobia, antisemitism, and intolerance, as well as incidents of hate crimes, and to make clear that such crimes are to be treated by officials as human rights abuses, not ‘hooliganism,’ and that they will be fully and promptly investigated and prosecuted”; “take steps to discourage rhetoric that promotes xenophobia or intolerance, including religious intolerance,” while promoting freedom of expression; provide training for law enforcement officers to address ethnic hatred and promote tolerance; establish a nationwide anti-discrimination body; implement the recommendations by Russia’s Presidential Council on Human Rights, the official Russian Human Rights Ombudsman, and the Council of Europe’s Commission against Racism and Intolerance “to address antisemitism and xenophobia and prevent and punish hate crimes, including full implementation by regional and local law enforcement personnel of criminal code provisions prohibiting incitement and violence motivated by ethnic or religious hatred, in accordance with standards established by the European Court of Human Rights.”

3. BELARUS GUILTY OF ‘SERIOUS VIOLATIONS.’ The report referred to Belarus as having “a highly authoritarian government, with almost all political power concentrated in the hands of President Aleksandr Lukashenko and his small circle of advisors. The Lukashenko regime has engaged in numerous serious human rights abuses, including involvement in the ‘disappearances’ of several key opposition figures, the imprisonment of political opponents and journalists, and strict controls on the media.” The report noted that human rights conditions deteriorated further after the March 2006 presidential elections, condemned as fraudulent by OSCE observers. The government “continues to commit serious violations of the right of its citizens to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief,” USCIRF stated. “Religious freedom conditions, which had already declined as a result of the strict law on religion passed in October 2002, deteriorated further in 2007.” Thus USCIRF continues to place Belarus on its Watch List, and will maintain scrutiny throughout the year to determine whether the government’s record has deteriorated to a level warranting designation as a “country of particular concern.”

USCIRF recommended that the U.S. government use diplomacy to advance the protection of human rights in Belarus; coordinate with the European Union on the application of financial sanctions and visa bans on Belarusian officials, particularly those who are directly responsible for abuses of religious freedom; block Belarus membership in the UN Human Rights Council; and urge the government to issue invitations to the UN special rapporteurs on violations of human rights.

4. REPRESSION IN TURKMENISTAN ‘LARGELY UNCHANGED.’ Since 2000, USCIRF has raised serious concerns about conditions for freedom of religion or belief in Turkmenistan and has recommended that the country be designated by the Secretary of State as a “country of particular concern” (CPC) because of its systematic violations of religious freedom and related human rights. Despite repeated recommendations, the U.S. government has never designated it as a CPC.

Under President Saparmurat Niyazov, who died in December 2006, Turkmenistan was “among the most repressive and isolated states in the world,” the report stated. His heir, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, implemented educational reforms and promised reforms in a variety of other sectors. “Despite the flaws accompanying his orchestrated presidential election, and while no changes have been made to the country’s oppressive laws, he nonetheless has initiated some limited positive steps relevant to religious freedom and other human rights,” the report acknowledged. “These include the release in August 2007 of 11 political prisoners, some decline in President Niyazov’s oppressive personality cult, the formation of two new official commissions relevant to human rights concerns, and an expressed willingness to consider reform of the country’s religion law. Despite these achievements, however, the system of oppressive laws and practices that have led to severe violations of human rights, including freedom of religion or belief, remain in place.” The report charged that the repressive atmosphere under Niyazov “remains largely unchanged.”

In light of “persistent, serious problems,” USCIRF recommended that Turkmenistan be designated a CPC. At the same time, USCRIF acknowledged “positive steps” by Berdimuhamedov and called on the new government “to implement reforms to bring Turkmenistan’s laws, policies, and practices into accordance with international human rights norms. At the very least, these steps should include reform of the religion law and the removal of any state-imposed ideology from the religious practice of Turkmenistan’s citizens.”

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