Volume 8, Number 31
August 1, 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 OPENS ZELTSER’S TRIAL BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. American lawyer Emmanuel Zeltser has gone on trial behind closed doors in Belarus, Reuters reported on July 30. He is charged with carrying forged documents and drugs, in addition to industrial espionage. According to his lawyer Dmitry Goryachko, he could face up seven years in prison if found guilty. He described Zeltser’s medical condition as “stable but serious.” Also standing trial on the documents charge was Zeltser's secretary, Vladlena Funk.

Zeltser and Funk were detained upon their arrival in Minsk on March 12. At first, they were charged with using fake documents. On April 25, U.S. Consul Caroline Savage visited him in jail. Zeltser told her that he had been beaten on the second and third days of his detention. She said that Zeltser was very weak and had difficulty walking and talking. In Washington, the Belarusian charge d'affaires was summoned to the Department of State, which called for Zeltser's release "on humanitarian grounds."

In a letter to the Belarus 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 detention and an investigation of allegations of abuse.

Reuters pointed out that Zeltser, a Russian-born, New York-based specialist in Russian law and organized crime, was arrested “at the height of a diplomatic row between Belarus and the United States.” Condemned by Western countries for repressing human rights, Belarus told the U.S. ambassador to leave, following U.S. sanctions against Belarusian oil company Belneftekhim.

According to Reuters, the drug charge was added after the security service, still called KGB, said that more than 100 tablets identified as “narcotics” were discovered on Zeltser. His lawyer said the drugs were to treat a back ailment. An earlier report from Minsk suggested that the government treated the case as affecting national security, therefore secret.

Reuters identified Zeltser as a director of the American Russian Law Institute which promotes legal reform in Russia and noted that his reason to travel to Belarus was to represent the interests of Josef Kay, a relative of the late Georgian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili.

HATE CRIMES IN MOSCOW RISE SIXFOLD, CITY OFFICIALS DENY SURGE. The number of hate crimes committed in Moscow has exploded this year, rising sixfold compared to the same period last year, according to Alexander Bastrykin, head of the federal government’s Investigative Committee, as reported by “The Moscow Times.” The authorities registered 73 hate crimes in Moscow in the first six months of this year, a trend Bastrykin said must be halted with "decisive and systematic efforts."

"We are worried that while the overall number of crimes registered in Russia has shrunk by 9%, crimes of an extremist nature are increasing year after year," Bastrykin said.

Mikhail Ionkin, spokesman for the committee's Moscow branch, said that the spike in hate crimes was not just a reflection of the authorities' efforts to crack down on such crimes. "It's no secret that hate crimes are on the rise," Ionkin said. "We are not registering more because of any change in methods or priorities on our part. We have always worked with equal focus against extremism." Ionkin declined to discuss what could be behind the dramatic rise. "It's complicated," he said.

The government makes no distinction made within the statistics between neo-Nazi assaults and murders, the distribution of Islamist or neo-Nazi propaganda, or the increasing number of cases in which police detain non-violent political opponents of the government like the National Bolshevik Party or liberal followers of Gary Kasparov and charge them with "extremism."

Nevertheless, Moscow city officials once again went out of their way to deny the magnitude of hate crimes. On July 18, Moscow's chief prosecutor Yuri Syomin, who in March reported that the number of extremist crimes is actually falling "year by year" in Moscow, gave an interview to the local newspaper "Vechenyaya Moskva" in which he sharply criticized nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for what he termed their exaggerated reports of racist violence. He singled out the widely respected Sova Information-Analytical Center, stating that it puts out "astronomical figures" of the number of skinheads in Russia (even though Sova does not collect such impossible-to-gather statistics) and accused Sova of counting every attack on a minority that is not a plain robbery as a hate crime. Syomin spent an inordinate amount of time talking about the National Bolshevik Party, which has not been implicated in any hate crimes in Moscow, but whose agitation sometimes gets counted as an "extremist crime." He reported in the interview that 52 extremist crimes have been recorded so far this year in Moscow--21 fewer crimes than Bastrykin's agency reported just a week later. Finally. Syomin made the claim that it is thanks to greater police focus on "extremist crimes” that the number of murders of ethnic minorities in Moscow has fallen for three years in a row.

“The Moscow Times” quoted Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy head of the Sova Center, to the effect that the case of the gang that went on trial last week in the Moscow City Court involving eight people accused of committing 20 racist murders received so much publicity that it could have sparked copycat crimes. But the authorities' apparent decision to prosecute neo-Nazi groups more actively could also be contributing to the spike, Kozhevnikova said. "In big cities, we know there are lots of underground Nazi groups," she said. "When the government began to investigate their activities and arrest them, they reacted violently against ethnic minorities." Kozhevnikova cited an incident in Moscow early this year when a racist murder was committed in the same location where a group of neo-Nazis had been arrested the previous day.

“The Moscow Times” published the Sova Center’s finding: 60 racist murders were recorded across the country so far this year while last year’s total amounted to 85 such crimes. The true number of hate crimes is likely to be three to four times higher than the number registered by authorities, Kozhevnikova cautioned.

SKINHEADS SUSPECTED IN 21 ETHNIC KILLINGS. A skinhead gang of seven has been implicated in the murder of at least 21 members of ethnic minorities, according to “The Moscow Times” dated July 25, citing the Investigative Committee. Seven suspects, under investigation for the murder of two Uzbeks in Moscow in May, are now suspected of killing at least 19 other "individuals with non-Slavic appearances," the committee said in a statement.

After their arrest for the murder of the two Uzbeks, four suspects confessed to more racially motivated murders, including that of an acquaintance from Kazakhstan, the Investigative Committee said in the statement. The suspects told investigators that they murdered the Kazakh man, whose last name was Melnik, in the apartment where they were arrested and proceeded to chop up the body and bury his remains in the courtyard.

The statement identified the four suspects by their last names: Tamashev, Molotkov, Nikiforenko, and Yurov. Tamashev said he was a member of a nationalist group called the National-Socialist Society.

On July 24, the Moscow City Court ruled that a jury would hear the similar but separate case of Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, both 17, who along with six other skinheads are charged with committing 20 racist murders.

ETHNIC RUSSIAN FACES JAIL TERM FOR SENDING ANTI-RUSSIAN HATE TEXTS. A Rostov Region man is facing up to two years in prison for hate speech after allegedly sending text messages to hundreds of cell phones calling for ethnic Russians to be killed, prosecutors said, according to “The Moscow Times” of July 25. Over the course of two weeks last summer, the suspect, himself an ethnic Russian, sent text messages to 400 strangers that read, "Death to Russian pigs," Vladimir Khudorsky of the Volgodonsk City Prosecutor's Office said.

Several recipients of the messages reported them to police that subsequently detained the 20-year-old suspect. Khudorsky said that the suspect who went on trial last week cooperated with investigators but has been unable to explain why he sent the messages.

There have been only two cases in recent years in which the authorities have charged suspects with disseminating hate speech via text messages. Galina Kazhevnikova, deputy head of the Sova Center, said racial tensions run high in the Rostov Region and that text messages calling for aggression against ethnic Russians could have triggered a violent backlash against ethnic minorities.

FAR-RIGHT YOUTHS FACE TERRORISM CHARGES. Four young men face terrorism charges in St. Petersburg in connection with two bombings last year as prosecutors presented the case to court, according to a July 28 report by the state news agency RIA-Novosti. Using the euphemistic language typical of Russian officials when speaking about far-right violence, the report described the motivation for the bombings as "displeasure with city government policies aimed at regulating inter-ethnic relations" in St. Petersburg. One of the bombing attacks targeted an anti-fascist event called "Food Not Bombs" on February 4, 2007. A saleswoman at a nearby kiosk was hurt by the explosion.

Neo-Nazis regularly attack participants in "Food Not Bombs" during which anti-fascists distribute food to homeless people, and in 2005 murdered an anti-fascist activist named Timur Kacharava as he returned home from one such event. The bombers also allegedly targeted a McDonalds in the city on February 18, injuring six victims. Their trial is scheduled for July 31.

MASKED MEN BURN TAJIKS OUT OF THEIR HOMES IN MOSCOW. Five masked men threw Molotov cocktails into a building housing Tajik construction workers and stabbed them as they ran out to escape the flames, according to a July 29 article posted on the web site of the national daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda." The attack took place at 4 a.m. on July 28 in Moscow. The assailants fled after witnesses yelled for help. Five of the construction workers were hospitalized, and doctors are reportedly fighting for the lives of two of the men.

The victims told police that their attackers used racist epithets during the attack. While investigators have not excluded ethnic hatred as a possible motive for the attack, they are also looking into reports of an earlier clash involving Tajik construction workers and "competitors" for the same job of reconstructing the Leningrad Train Station.

TWO MINORITIES STABBED IN ST. PETERSBURG. The victims of two separate stabbing attacks that took place within 24 hours believe that ethnic hatred motivated their assailants, according to a July 29 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. On July 25, an ethnic Azeri was stabbed; the next day, a citizen of Korea. Both victims are hospitalized. Police are investigating.

TRIO ATTACKS CHINESE CONSTRUCTION WORKERS. Three men robbed and beat Chinese construction workers in the Leningrad Region village of Begunitsy, according to a July 31 article posted on the web site of the national daily "Komsomolskaya Pravda." The assailants burst into a school where Chinese construction crew were sleeping, beat them, and robbed them of phones and money. Police caught the suspects, the head of the local fire department and two unemployed men, as they tried to sell the phones in the village. One suspect confessed that he had problems in the past with Tajiks, wanted revenge against them, and took the Chinese for Tajiks. The trio faces charges of armed robbery.

ST. PETERSBURG SOCCER FANS FINED FOR RACISM. The main European soccer federation UEFA fined a St. Petersburg soccer team for the racist behavior of its fans, according to "Kommersant" dated July 26. The team "Zenit" will have to pay 60,000 euros as a result of a March 12 incident in a game against Marseilles. "Zenit" fans reportedly threw bananas at black players from the opposing squad and made monkey sounds. This is the third time "Zenit" has been fined by UEFA for its fans' racist behavior, including the unfurling of a swastika banner.

LVIV OFFICE OF JEWISH YOUTH PROGRAM ATTACKED, STAFF BEATEN. On the afternoon of July 29, antisemites broke into the local office of “Stars,” a Torah study program for Jewish youth in Lviv, Ukraine, according to UCSJ's monitor Meylakh Sheykhet. They broke windows and beat two teachers with metal rods. The assailants were screaming antisemitic slogans such as “Kikes leave Ukraine” and “Ukraine is occupied by Kikes.” The victims filed a report with the police.

"There is no doubt that this is an act of antisemitism and those attackers do not want to see observant Jews meeting at the building," Sheykhet said. "It is possible because some Ukrainian leaders promote xenophobic and antisemitic ideas in society."

CHINESE STUDENTS STABBED IN KIEV. Masked assailants stabbed two Chinese students in Kiev in “a possible hate crime,” according to a July 29 report by the UNIAN news agency. The attack took place on July 20. Four Chinese students took shelter from a rainstorm under a bridge when they were approached by three men who attacked them. Two of the students fled the scene before they were hurt, but the other two were admitted to the hospital with stab wounds. Police investigating the incident have not ruled out the possibility that it was a hate crime.

PALESTINIAN MEDICAL STUDENT BEATEN. On July 19, a Palestinian medical student in Vinnitsa, Ukraine was walking to a dormitory for foreigners when a young man attacked him, shouting racist slogans, a local human rights activist posted on the web site coalitionagainsthate.org. The student was hospitalized. The victim recalled that some time ago his assailant met him on the street and told him, "Go to your black quarter."

On July 23, police called a press conference to discuss the incident and proposed that the attack took place because of a girl, supposedly the assailant’s girlfriend.

The human rights activist predicted that since the alleged attacker is the son of a rich businessman, the case will not go far.

PROJECT LAUNCHED TO COMBAT XENOPHOBIA, ANTISEMITISM IN UKRAINE. The Ukrainian Jewish Committee and a group of young Ukrainians launched a project countering xenophobia and antisemitism, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported on July 27. Using the slogans “Say no to xenophobia” and “Antisemitism--No!" more than 30 members of the group that calls itself “Youth, Europe, Future,” together with the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, protested in Kiev against racist attacks and other forms of intolerance. Xenophobia and the propagandizing of Nazi and racist ideas have risen in Ukraine, leaders of the two groups told JTA.

The project will monitor and counteract intolerance in the media, as well as at events, demonstrations and speeches. It also will maintain a database of the neo-Nazi centers, push authorities to intensify the struggle against antisemitism, race discrimination, xenophobia, and other forms of intolerance. “We are planning to do our best to combat all forms of intolerance in collaboration with the Ukrainian government, as well as with European and American organizations,” Eduard Dolinsky, the director general of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, told JTA. “The Ukrainian Jewish Committee demands that the Ukrainian government admit officially there is racial discrimination in the country and take measures to overcome it and protect possible victims, according to the international obligations of Ukraine.”

Aleksandr Feldman, the leader of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee and a Ukrainian lawmaker, said his organization is especially concerned about the absence of official statistics regarding racial and xenophobic attacks. “The racial and antisemitic motivation as a rule is not taken into account, and Ukrainian courts identify them as hooliganism or rowdiness," Feldman said.

According to Amnesty International, Ukraine has had about 30 serious racist attacks this year and most of the victims were of African or Asian origin. Gypsies and Jews, as well as buildings owned by Jews, also have been targeted.

* * * QUOTE OF THE WEEK, A FORM OF SLAVERY * * * “Routine beatings and homicides are spreading fear among migrant workers from Central Asia and southern Russia,” National Public Radio’s Moscow correspondent Gregory Feifer reported in “All Things Considered” on July 29. “They say they live like virtual slaves in a country that depends on their labor. It's thought 60% of Tajikistan's working population is in Russia. Central Asians form part of a virtually segregated, second class of residents, providing cheap labor doing the kind of backbreaking and dangerous work Russians refuse to do.”

HATRED FEEDS ON LIES, DISTORTIONS, AND BUREAUCRATIC BLUNDERS
Is This the Summer of Targeting the Internal Enemy?

1. RUSSIAN PROSECUTORS USE EXTREMISM LAW TO GO AFTER BAPTISTS. A few weeks after prosecutors in two Russian cities started investigations against Jehovah's Witnesses using anti-extremism laws, prosecutors in Moscow issued a warning to a Baptist congregation for unspecified "extremist activity" according to a July 29 report by the Slavic Law Center, a nongovernmental organization focused on religious freedom. On July 25, prosecutors from Moscow’s Perovsky District issued the warning to the Novogireevo church, a congregation of about 250 people founded in 1991.

Pastor Pyotr Sautov told the Slavic Law Center that prosecutors offered no details about what the extremism charges are based on, which is a violation of the law; nor have his subsequent inquiries received any answers. The congregation can now be disbanded if prosecutors choose to bring additional charges of "extremism" within a year of the first warning.

According to a July 29 report by the news web site Gazeta.ru, a district government body in the Moscow Region has denied Baptists the right to hold a congress in the Istrinsky District. The congress was planned for July 31-August 4 at the Rucheek children's camp, but the district government banned it, citing concerns that the camp only holds 300 people, while the Baptists plan to bring 3,000. While this may be a legitimate reason, violations of safety and fire codes have been spuriously applied in the past to prevent meetings by Jehovah's Witnesses and other minority Christians.

2. GHETTOS FOR GASTARBEITERS IN MOSCOW? On July 23, the press service of Moscow’s South-East Administrative District announced that it is building four residential neighborhoods for foreigners and migrant workers. Calling such schemes "ghettos for gastarbeiters," "Novyye izvestiya" quoted Nikita Mkrtchyan, a migration specialist at the Moscow Center for Demography and Human Ecology, to the effect that these official plans were only a step away from creating "ethnic quarters living their own life." Karomat Sharipov, president of the All-Russian Movement of Labor Migrants of Tajikistan in Russia, was quoted as saying that "such urban regions can turn into a real magnet for various extremist groups." With their creation, he said, "skinheads will not have to think any more about where to find their victims."

In his blog “Window on Eurasia,” Paul Goble suggested on July 29 that “relations between ethnic Russians and non-Russians in Moscow [are] deteriorating so rapidly that officials in desperation are taking a step that only a month ago they denounced as dangerously counterproductive: They are setting up special housing districts for non-Russians.” A former U.S. government specialist in ethnic groups in the USSR, Goble pointed out the danger of non-Russians living in those special districts coming “under the influence of extremist groups who will find it easier to organize their co-ethnics or co-religionists. Indeed, some non-Slavic groups are now forming self-defense organizations to protect members of their community.” He cited Roman Silantyev, described as “a specialist on Islam with close ties to the Moscow Patriarchate and also reputedly to the Russian security agencies,” to the effect that radical Muslims can now be found in all Russian regions.

3. LIST OF OFFICIALS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE GREAT FAMINE IS DOCTORED. A Jewish group in Ukraine is raising objections that a list of officials held responsible for the country's Great Famine in 1932-33 was unfairly weighted to stress the participation of Jews, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported on July 29. Ukrainian historians agree that the famine was ordered by the dictator Yosif Stalin and carried out top Soviet state and Communist officials, as well as the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB. The list was released on July 23 by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on its web site, sbu.gov.ua.

Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksandr Feldman, the leader of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, told a July 29 news conference in Kiev that the number of Jews on the list of the Soviet officials is tendentiously inflated. For example, some Jewish-sounding surnames were substituted for names that did not sound Jewish. In addition, some Jews whose names appear on the list could not have had a direct impact on the famine.

The Ukrainian Jewish Committee charged that publishing the list is an attempt to hide the principal perpetrators of the Great Famine. It said the list does not name some well-known organizers, including Grigory Petrovsky, the chairman of the Presidium of the Parliament of the Ukrainian SSR, and Vlas Chubar, the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissariat.

The Jewish Committee called on Ukrainian secret service to revise the list and clear up the “inaccuracy.” The secret service on its site thanked the committee for the feedback and said that the list would grow.

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