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English Language Page Though the current status of the small indigenous ethnic communities in the Russian north, Siberia and Far East is rather poor, their problems have primarily come either from the lack of requisite government support or from their special rights being largely ignored by the local authorities or other residents. Members of many other ethnic groups and minorities in the Russian Federation are reported to have been suffering from a different ill sustained by the Russian government and society. This is the problem of racial and ethnic xenophobia and intolerance. This whole book would be too small for all ethnic discriminatory practices and their effects in Russia to be appropriately described and for all targets of discrimination to be listed. In public life, it is never easy to differentiate between the specific problems of ethnic relations, on the one hand, and the problems pertaining to the so-called “friendly”–“alien” or “local”–”newcomer” relations, on the other hand. What is more, when the right to sustain a traditional habitat is put against the right to choose a place of residence, ethnic discriminatory practices appear to be marginal effects of a more deeply rooted conflict, and they could hardly be eliminated through the use of conventional remedies. The policy positions espoused by regional authorities and local administrations have time and again been derived from sentiments held by most of the local populace. While regional leaders and governing bodies try to reflect the attitudes prevailing in society, they usually feel compelled to be politically correct when appearing in the public arena. Frequently, when interviewed privately, many officials would share the common negative stereotypes with regard to different ethnic minorities and stand up for the use of certain discriminatory measures to keep things under control. Sometimes, public officials would openly resort to making xenophobic pronouncements, particularly, when seeking to secure extra support from their electorate in an election campaign. Many examples can be provided to this end, the most graphic ones coming from the Krasnodar territory. Notably, during the last few years, the international community has been particularly concerned with Russia’s policy over the status of the MeskhetianTurks. As a reminder, the Meskhetian Turks were evicted from their homeland in the Akhaltsikhsky district (Georgia) for the first time to Central Asia in November 1944 (Georgia is still reluctant to let the Meskhetian Turks be repatriated). In 1989, following a series of bloody pogroms in Fergana (Uzbekistan) and subsequent public disturbances in Tashkent, Syrdarya and Samarkand regions (Uzbekistan), a total of about 90 thousand Meskhetian Turks once again had to flee, selling for next to nothing or just abandoning their homes, vehicles and cattle. Under a government program, 17 thousand Fergana-origin Meskhetian Turks had been moved to six “non-black-soil” Russian regions. While running for their lives and seeking to save their children, the remaining 70 thousand Meskhetian Turks from other corners of Uzbekistan spontaneously moved to as many as twenty different Russian regions. For the most part, they have managed to buy housing, get residence registrations and enjoy civil and political rights on par with local population. However, the Krasnodar regional authorities have been reluctant to let the migrants settle and have even managed to secure some backing from Moscow on this. Currently, about 13 thousand undocumented and unregistered Meskhetian Turks are found within the Krasnodar territory. It needs to be underscored that by February 1992, when Federal Law “On Citizenship of the Russian Federation” was adopted, nearly all of the aforementioned migrants had already been living within the Krasnodar territory, while having no place of residence outside Russia. Given the circumstance, they were then and continue to be de-facto Russian citizens, pursuant to the provisions of Part 1, Article 13 of the abovementioned law. In all other Russian regions, the applicants have without major difficulties had their citizenships confirmed, domestic passports updated and registered. In addition to the Krasnodar territory, other exceptions to the general course of events are the Stavropol territory, where about 400 Meskhetian Turks living in the Budenovsky and Sovetsky districts managed to secure their Russian citizenship and get registered only within 1996–1997, and Kabardino-Balkaria, where from 400 to 700 Meskhetian Turk migrants have not received their residence registrations as of yet. Despite the fact that the Meskhetian Turks in the Krasnodar territory have for over a decade now been living in their own homes and tending their plots of land, they still have no residence registrations, thereby being unable to secure permanent jobs. Whenever they manage to get jobs, their wages or compensation packages would generally be fixed at heavily reduced rates. To emphasize, the Meskhetian Turks receive neither pension benefits nor social allowances, nor adequate healthcare services. They have problems getting their marriages or newly born babies officially registered. As they come of age, the young Meskhetian Turks cannot receive domestic passports or matriculate at higher schools of learning. The Meskhetian Turks enjoy no voting rights. The only official authorities willing to unreservedly pass them as Russian citizens are the local military registration offices seeking to call up the Meskhetian Turks of conscription age into the Russian armed forces. Understandably, all these practices only serve to the growth of corruption, with the law enforcers making their windfall profits on fleecing the local Turks for the last twelve years. The Kuban authorities have been set on pushing the Meskhetian Turks out of the Krasnodar territory. Notably, the local residents for the most part have been supportive of the official discriminatory policies maintained by the regional administration. The people and the officials appear to be jointly concerned about the “criminal inclinations” of the Meskhetian Turks and are unwilling to co-exist with them. Starting in 1990, when the so-called Cossack revival movement was launched, the Kuban-based Meskhetian Turks have been persistently made targets for threats and violent attacks (with a number of pogroms being officially reported) mounted by the local groups of Cossack national-radicals. The local print media are reported to have carried a series of articles condemning the Meskhetian Turks, some of those are “Turkish Cow Upsets Russian Boy,” “Turks Kill Us With Chemicals,” “Living Together Is Impossible,” and other pieces in the same vein. One would be fully justified in believing that this blatant hate-speech effort could not have been pursued without concurrence from the regional authorities. As they sought to have the unwelcome guests deported from the region, members of the Krasnodar territory’s legislative assembly joined forces with members of Adygea’s legislature to draft a federal-level law on migrants. The bill of their creation explicitly stipulates that Meskhetian Turks and Kurds should be evicted from the Krasnodar territory and also, along with other groups of migrants, expelled from the Russian Federation all-together. Such measures are presented as necessary because, allegedly, the ethnic communities to which those migrants belong are characterized by prohibitive mentalities, asocial attitudes and excessive criminal proclivities (18). Interestingly enough, the Krasnodar regional authorities have been receiving ethnic Russians and other “Slavic” newcomers seeking permanent residence without limitations. Notably, migrants from the Trans-Caucasus have been settling in the region in exchange for bribes, with the “fee” set by corrupt officials. Members of the International Society of Meskhetian Turks “Vatan” sent an appeal to the RF President. They highlighted massive violations of the rights of the Meskhetian Turks in the Krasnodar territory, describing the current situation in the following fashion: Of late, tensions in the region have been running especially high, with the local ethnic minorities being dangerously pressured by the authorities. Most heavily targeted have been the Meskhetian Turks. Incidents of open intimidation, threats, slander and hatred are increasingly more frequent. There have been reports of assaults by militant gangs (calling themselves Cossacks) and numerous beatings, arrests and insults, both on public and private premises. The impunity of employers and those taking part in these outrages has led to nationalistic leaflets being distributed, rumors being spread and public opinion being manipulated. The risk of a “bloody Fergana” is thereby being incrementally fueled. Attempts to create a legal base for another deportation of the Meskhetian Turks from the Krasnodar territory seem to be variously supported by the official mass media outlets. With N. Kondratenko, former head of the region and notorious fighter against the “global Zionist conspiracy,” being replaced in December 2000 by his protege, A. Tkachev, the regional situation has not changed for the better. What is more, the new Governor started to be even more aggressive towards the local Meskhetian Turks, while seeking to gain maximum popular support. Since January 1, 2001, the old Soviet-origin passports carried by the Meskhetian Turks are invalid across the Russian Federation, since these documents have not been updated to contain either citizenship entries or residence registration markings required. As of February 1, 2001, 13 thousand Meskhetian Turks residing in the Krasnodar territory have had the temporary residence registration markings in their passports expire. (It should be noted, by the way, that those markings had been made in their passports in the fall of last year on the advice from the UN.) Since local authorities declined to provide residence registration extensions, they have effectively turned the Meskhetian Turks into “persons without permanent abode,” or transients. The police since then have been visiting the Meskhetians’ homes, not only collecting fixed “tributes” (5 roubles per capita per day for the right to enjoy the fresh air of Kuban) but also confiscating the Soviet-origin passports that Russia allegedly wanted nothing to do with. Of course, there may be other explanations for all those practices. The authorities appear to use the Meskhetian Turks as milking cows, particularly given that the Krasnodar regional administration has received hundreds of thousands of US dollars from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to help meet the relevant social security tasks. Only a fraction of that aid was appropriated as promised, according to T. Sarvarov, property manager of the International Society of Meskhetian Turks “Vatan.” The pressing problem of the Meskhetian Turks has become broadly discussed in the West. Importantly, their predicament is also reflective of the actual conditions of the other Russia-based ethnic minorities that continue to receive no governmental protection and that have been turned into some sort of “rogue communities” by certain disingenuous politicians seeking to support only their self-serving interests. The situation that the Meskhetian Turks find themselves in is not quite unique. The Kurd refugees suffer the same hardships within the Krasnodar territory. They have been expelled from Armenia in 1989 and then from the Lachinsk Triangle (Red Kurdistan, as it was known in the 1930s) in Nagorho-Karabakh and other territories seized by the Armenian armed forces during their military operations against Azerbaijan in 1992. Because most of them reached the Krasnodar territory after February 1992, when Federal Law “On Citizenship of the Russian Federation” had already been in effect, the Azerbaijan-origin Kurd refugees, unlike the Meskhetian Turks, cannot invoke the provisions of Part 1, Article 13 of this law. It would be foolhardy to assess the ethnic policies pursued by the new Krasnodar authorities as a mere replica of the practices maintained under the former regional leader, N. Kondratenko. Apart from the ongoing unlawful drive to confiscate domestic passports (issued during Soviet times and regarded as something that neither the Russian federal nor regional governments allegedly have anything to do with) from the local Meskhetian Turks, the regional administration has launched an effort to restore some of previous strategies used to deal with the pressing ethnic problems. For example, in 2001, a gypsy camp of over 100 persons was deported from the Krasnodar territory with the use of police forces. This eviction was the first such case in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Admittedly, the Roma people have been experiencing a great deal of hardships in Russia. Any attempts on their part to settle on land were met by directives on the part of local authorities to either move on or pay heavy fines for unauthorized construction projects. Regional government officials would even go as far as to write out special ordinances for the Roma to travel on to the places of their official residence registration. Members of the aforementioned Roma encampment initially managed to temporarily register with the passport and visa division of the Zapadny district police department (with bribes duly paid and fingerprints taken) and be settled near Krasnodar. However, soon their registrations were terminated and the authorities (unhappy that the whole arrangement was too troublesome and unprofitable) resolved to have the Roma deported (19). This is what T. Zhurbenko, staff reporter for the Tribuna newspaper and big supporter of law enforcers, had to say: Finally, trucks and trailers were made available and a good number of cadets from the local MVD law school were brought in. All of the local district police officials were also in attendance. The Mikhays (supposedly all the gypsies on the spot had the same family name) were verbally informed of the relevant injunction and the loading began. There is no need to tell what followed: cries, moans, whimpers, shouts and what not. It appeared that the gypsies were well aware of human rights and knew some human rights activists. They even threatened to appeal to the State Duma. Anyway, the entire gypsy camp was eventually loaded and trucked to the Voronezh region. The homes left behind were to be protected by the police until eventually broken into manageable segments and shipped to the rightful owners’ new destination. In short, the entire effort was completed without a drop of blood being shed. To emphasize, the recent regional public surveys show that our people have been so heavily brainwashed with all that baloney about human rights that they seem to be prepared to abandon their own rights to peaceful living and working conditions just to appear to be good proponents of human rights… (20) Another particularly disturbing example in this regard is seen in the ongoing persecution of the Chechens outside of Chechnya. Pressure exerted on the Chechens has been nearly the same and omnipresent across the Russian provinces, according to the latest regional reports. Importantly, local law enforces have been the principal bullies and oppressors in most of the cases. Notably, persecutions of the Chechens have generally been supported on the domestic level. Firstly, people largely seem to believe that police harass the Chechens as part of a more comprehensive effort to combat organized crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking, terrorism and other grave crimes. Russian media and press releases of law enforcement agencies have been prone to highlight the ethnic identities of “non-Slavic” detained persons or suspects. It should be noted, though, that during the initial months following the start of first and second Chechen wars respectively, Russian law enforcers, indeed, had been seen putting more pressure on Chechen organized crime gangs, but within a very short time the Chechens from the higher echelons of criminal structures managed to disengage themselves from their fighting compatriots in the North Caucasus and restored their trusting relationships with domestic law enforcement authorities. Secondly, negative attitudes towards the Chechens primarily come from the anti-Caucasian sentiments that had incrementally grown since the close of the 1970s and eventually culminated in violent pogroms during the 1990s. In a number of Russian regions, not only do the authorities exert pressure on local migrants of Caucasian origin but extremist nationalistic groups also intimidate them. The latter’s actions have been generally either overlooked or supported, with periodic flairs-ups of public violence being explained as unwelcome manifestations provoked by the victims themselves, whose mannerisms and behavior patterns appear either aggressive or too much out of the ordinary. To provide an example, the recent human rights report from the Voronezh region contains the following findings of the Voronezh-based public survey, secured by the “Kvalitas” Public Polling Institute. Asked “is there any ethnic community whose members you particularly dislike,” respondents provided the following picture: the Chechens were hated by 13.9%; migrants from the Caucasus by 10.5%; Jews by 3.2%. Only 56.7% of all respondents indicated they had no such ethnic hate targets. Another 5.8% found it difficult to respond to the query. Interestingly enough, the drafters of the report on the Voronezh region pointed out that the Chechens were the one ethnic community that was most frequently mentioned or referred to in the negative sense by local media. As concerns the infamous pseudo-ethnic term “persons of Caucasian nationality” (or Caucasian migrants), it was mentioned in the negative sense three times as often as in the positive. Thirdly, the continuing Russian-Chechen war and the inevitable losses and casualties have left law enforcement officers and members of other government structures particularly angered. 200–300 thousand uniformed Russian citizens participated in the first and second Chechen military campaigns on the federal side, according to rather conservative estimates. Many of those people have been poisoned with hatred for the Chechens and are capable of spreading that sentiment. The very fact that the two campaigns in Chechnya have killed thousands of people (including both federal troops and Chechen militants, as well as innocent persons of different ethnic origins that happened to be in the area of military operations) has become a powerful wielder of tensions that now characterize the relationship between the Chechens and the rest of Russia’s populace. The 1999 terrorist acts in Dagestan, Moscow and Volgodonsk and the second Chechen war unleashed in the fall of that year were accompanied by massive ID checks, detainment of Chechens across the country, beatings and other unlawful violent acts carried out by members of the law enforcement agencies. The overall account of those events was presented in the reports on the human rights situation in the Russian regions for 1999 and 2000. Discriminatory practices continue to be used by the Ministry of Internal Affairs officers, who arbitrarily detain persons of allegedly Caucasian or Central Asian origins. As they are halted or detained for ID checks, these individuals, whose looks appear to be different from the generalized facial features of the bulk of the Russians, are more often than not be mistreated and humiliated. Notably, running the checks on the Chechens has now become a never-ending extortion campaign sustained by members of Russian law enforcement agencies. According to the Novye Izvestia daily (21), Lom-Ali Vatsayev, Malika Vatsayeva and the rest of their immediate family left their ruined home in Chechnya and moved to Moscow to be temporarily hosted by their relatives. Then, the Vatsayevs leased an apartment in the city of Ivanovo, not far away from Moscow and had their residence appropriately registered. It so happened that the registration question somehow triggered a whole chain of troubles for the family. Within two weeks of their moving to the new residence, the Vatsayevs had two police officers (Gargushin and Zhamalov) from the Ivanovo district police department paying them a visit to say that the family should get ready to be evicted. As M. Vatsayeva then found out, those two officials were acting on their own initiative, hoping to make some extra money this way. M. Vatsayeva turned to the Novye Izvestia daily for help and the latter’s editors make a few telephone calls. On the very same day, the head of the Ivanovo district police department, I. Khonsky, got in touch with M. Vatsayeva, extended his apologies to her family and promised that the Chechen refugees would never be bothered again. Nevertheless, the aforementioned corrupt police officers shortly afterwards summoned the head of the family, Lom-Ali Vatsayev, to the police station and enquired “if the Chechens would like to be left in peace. Should that be so, they should not have approached the newspaper with their complaints in the first place. After all, being adults, they should understand that they would not be left alone from now on…” (22) Members of law enforcement agencies continue the war with Chechnya on their own home turf by running unlawful searches and requisitions. A raid was mounted on May 29, 2001, in the Staritsky district of the Tver region, when a convoy of police cars drove into the main street of a local village and about 150 police officers led by the police investigator Kozlov launched their “special operation” (23) It was 07.30 when SWAT-type special police descended on N. Shamastov’s house in the village of Ildeykino. The head of the family was not at home. The police officers moved boorishly, waking up the sleeping women and children (the family also hosted relatives that had fled from the war-torn city of Gudermes in Chechnya). The police dropped expletives, calling the Chechen children jackals and wolves and insulting the women, according to N. Shamastov’s wife. One of the policemen pointed his submachine gun at a Chechen boy’s head and affected to press the trigger. N. Shamastov’s younger son was given a severe kick that sent him flat to the floor. His mother for a moment believed that he was killed. As she ventured to come up to the boy, she received such a powerful blow in the head that she was immediately off her feet and nearly passed out. When she sought to approach her son again, the policemen became angrier. They started to beat the Chechen woman and tried to hit her in the head with the butts of their submachine guns. When the head of the family returned, he was thrown off his feet in the dirt road right outside his house and had a submachine gun pointed at his head. A police officer said, “We were shooting to kill you in Chechnya, and we are going to do it here.” Within a few minutes, N. Shamastov was ordered to rise and step into his house. Then, he looked at the nearby warehouse owned by his brothers and saw their Gazelle-jeep driven out by the police. Shortly afterwards the local witnesses were brought in. Notably, the “official” sequence of searches and questionings proceeded pursuant to the established rules and without any beatings. Overall, the Shamastov family ended up being “lucky”: no bullets or drugs had been planted on them. They “merely” had their relative Nurid beaten up after he had been taken to the local wood 70 kilometers away, not to mention the other family members’ bruises. Also, a few sacks of grains and a pack of indoor tiles were “commandeered.” After the searches were completed, N. Shamastov’s wife said she would lodge a complaint with the local prosecutor’s office, which only triggered one of the police officers into saying: “If you go complaining, you will get another Chechen war here!” The story of this outrageous assault became known thanks to A. Dabaev, head of the “Vainakh” Chechen-Ingush diaspora in the Tver region, who managed to talk his compatriots into filing an application with the regional prosecutor’s office to have the whole thing properly investigated. The investigation revealed that the raid had been authorized by the Staritsky district prosecutor Kadanev at the request from a local resident who claimed that he had his wall clock, roll of masking film, and a sewing machine stolen. Afterwards, the district prosecutor visited that village in person to sort events out himself. Kadanev had nothing to say when N. Shamastov looked at him reproachfully and remonstrated, “Why have you done that? You know me inside and out. I have been living here for over two decades.” As S. Gubanov, security guard in a local store, protested by saying, “Why did they shoot my dog?” Kadanev just said, “You’d better forgive them.” Overall, the Staritsky district of the Tver region, is populated by 459 ethnic Chechens. Most of those had moved during the 1970s–1980s when the excessive Chechen-based labor force was urged to look for jobs elsewhere. Other local Chechens are recent refugees. To secure a residence registration has been nearly an impossible mission, even for the Chechens whose parents have been living in the Tver region since Soviet times. The passport bureu staff would usually refer to a certain directive barring them from granting residence registration to “persons of Caucasian nationality,” particularly the ones coming from Chechnya. Interestingly enough, that prohibitive “directive” story was disavowed by the passport registration service of the Tver regional MVD department. Even a more graphic description of a veritable “mop-up” raid (mounted in the Moscow region) has been provided by M. Khairullin, staff correspondent for the Novye Izvestia daily. His article appeared right after a “special operation” had been staged to search a dormitory of the Moscow-based “Nakhi” (translated from Chechen as “goodness, happiness, people”) studio-theater of the State University of Culture (located at 236 Bibliotechnaya St., Khimki, the Moscow region). Attending the classes in the studio-theater had been a total of 25 Chechen students aged from 16 through 22. Notably, that special operation happened to be run by the Moscow-based swift reaction composite police unit (just back from Chechnya) jointly with the Khimki district’s division against organized crime. On the night of March 27–28, 2001, shortly after 05.00 a. m., rushing into a room occupied by Assistant-Professor M. Didigov, head of a special university training program and recipient of the Merited Artist Award of Checheno-Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria, with the commanding shouts of “Get up, you, black asses!” were a few men wearing face masks and wielding submachine guns. M. Didigov was thrown down on the floor, and his hands were swiftly put behind his back and handcuffed.” Then, the intruders started to beat him with their booted feet and police batons, while screaming assorted insults in the process. M. Didigov’s son Timur, student at a law academy, received the same treatment. “I merely managed to ask them not to touch my son and was out cold,” said M. Didigov days later. However, the assaulters in police uniform would not heed the father’s plea. They just repeated the same cruel and violent procedure in the adjoining rooms: doors were broken up and then the undressed boys were dragged from their beds, severely thrashed and variously insulted. The police did not touch the girls, though they broke into their room too. All that transpired before the eyes of Professor Soltsaev, who was pushed out onto the staircase. Also forcibly driven out of his room were the noted Chechen journalist R. Karaev (assistant of the State Duma Deputy Aslakhanov) and his family members. The 20-year-old A. Gaitukaev asked the beefy camouflaged policemen to let him get dressed. “Maybe you, monkey, want a cup of morning tea served?” responded the outraged policeman as he opened the balcony door to let the winter cold in. This move was immediately replicated, with all balcony doors being thrown wide open to let the freezing wind blow through the premises. Photographs, videos, personal effects and notebooks were confiscated. Suddenly, the searchers came across a stack of the Derzhavniye Vedomoosti newspaper published by State Duma Deputy A. Aslakhanov. This produced a surge of fresh anger, as one of the policemen seized a few newspapers and started to hit M. Didigov in the head with those papers rolled into a sort of a club. As he did that, he hollered, “You, bloody militant! Now I see you are here to distribute this filthy anti-Russian paper!” Then, the local witnesses were brought in. At that point in time, the police officer in charge of the raid defiantly took the Walter pistol from under the pillow on T. Didigov’s bed and retrieved a silencer extension from the latter’s coat pocket. The special operation carried on. As the investigators proceeded to secure material evidence, the operatives from the swift reaction composite police unit chose to lift and pocket whatever caught their fancy. They opened the refrigerators to pick the better oranges for a bite to eat and walked from one room to another looking searchingly left and right. T. Didigov failed to locate his cell phone following that thorough and destructive search. (Also, a pair of socks, some pens and a bottle of M. Didigov’s wife’s perfume would never be found). As he entered the living room, one masked policeman spotted a pair of boxing gloves and without much ado seized and put them in his own plastic bag. “We need to work out a bit to get in shape,” he explained. While proceeding about their business, the searchers commented, “We will not let you study here anyway. So, you’d better get lost.” The students were showered with insults. All Chechens were likened to shepherds that should be forced to stick to their age-old pursuit. What is more, the raiders shouted that the Chechens were to blame for all the problems in Russia. As they finished expropriating the better-looking items, the policemen went to the kitchen to have a cup of tea or coffee, helping themselves to whatever was available in the refrigerator. Then, they carried on with their search of the premises. The search and investigative effort came to a close at about 10 o’clock, following which the Chechen students were thrown into police cars and driven away to the local police station. The young Chechens were all thoroughly interrogated and released within a few hours. The interrogators tried to talk Timur Didigov into confessing that he owned the “uncovered” Walter pistol for fear of the latter’s father being jailed. Assistant-Professor M. Didigov was detained the longest. He was released in the evening with no charges brought against him. According to the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, that “special operation” was mounted to follow up on a phone call to the police emergency line about the Chechen dormitory allegedly holding a cache of explosives (24). As is absolutely clear from the account above, the law enforcers did not seem to be particularly focused on creating “convenient” evidence. In the end, the “confiscated” weapon failed to be attributed to anyone, and the special police investigators just ended their adventure by lifting a few personal effects and having a cup of tea at the Chechen students’ expense. Notwithstanding numerous pledges from the relevant prosecutor’s and MVD offices given to State Duma Deputy A. Aslakhanov to have the guilty parties tracked down and appropriately punished, the culprits have never been located. When interviewed by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, A. Khadashev, one of the victims of the aforementioned raid and a resident of Grozny, gave this assessment of the whole undertaking: We came to realize that they just wanted to vent their anger on somebody. Down there, in Chechnya, they feel in charge of things. Now they are here, and they want to carry on as usual. We are merely providing better targets. To be more serious, I can hardly explain their moves. Why did they take away my family pictures? Why would they need those? Why did they take away a telephone card from one of us? They even scooped up the meager roubles that we normally save to pay for our meals. I noticed that they did not feel secure. When we were escorted out of the dormitory building to the police cars, they would repeatedly bark at us, “Do not look me in the eye! I know you want to capture me in you memory. Just look away!” They seemed to be scared even though they were wearing masks. Do you call that life in your own home? (25) A similar description could be given to the “passport regime inspection operation” run by the local police at the Tver State Agricultural Academy. Importantly, there was one distinctive difference: after molesting Chechen students for half an hour, the police started to beat all other students present, ethnic Russians included (26). Also, mention should be made of a Moscow-based incident involving veterans of the “counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya.” On July 2, 2001, close to the building overlooking a small park on 2nd Novopodmoskovny Per., two policemen (one being a driver from the central MVD car pool) and two uniformed army men, cruelly beat up a 40-year-old Chechen passer-by that happened to be a refugee from Grozny. The victim was taken to a nearby hospital with severe brain injuries. To emphasize, the assaulters were soon apprehended. The subsequent investigation revealed that the two policemen had been to the war-torn Chechnya and were suffering from the so-called “Chechen syndrome.” Not only police threaten Chechens across the Russian Federation. In some of the southern Russian regions, local law enforcement authorities have been backed by the disparate Cossack formations that also have been seeking to squeeze out the Chechens. For example, on March 10, 2001, a dangerous face-off developed between dozens of Chechens and Cossacks in the township of Bogoroditskoe (Rostov region). Each side was armed with metal poles, axes, steel pipes and knives. The conflict appeared to have started on March 8 (International Women’s Day and public holiday in Russia) when the Chechens slapped a few girls in the face and beat some of the Cossack boys at a local discotheque. Luckily, the conflict produced no loss of life, though four Cossacks were taken to a hospital, with one in critical condition. The Chechens also suffered some casualties, but none of them asked for either legal or medical help. An emergency meeting of the Cossack chiefs and then a general assembly of the Bogoroditskoe community took place. They demanded that a Cossack replace the head of the local administration (who was seen as a neutral figure during the conflict) and that the Chechens (with 156 recently arrived to Bogoroditskoe from Vedeno in Chechnya) be deported back to where they belonged. The township held 96 permanent Chechen residents that housed dozens of distant relations fleeing from the military operations. The words of the Cossacks had been quickly translated into action, and numerous Chechen cars and homes were ruined. The township looked no different from a frontline settlement, patrolled by special police units and Cossack elements. Eventually, a solution to the conflict was found by V. Vodolatsky, Deputy Governor of the Rostov region and Chief of the Greater Don Cossack Force, members of the regional MVD and FSB departments, investigators from the prosecutor’s office, and representatives from the local district administration. Importantly, the law enforcers had a criminal legal action filed on the case. In addition, the police mounted a passport check and an effort to confiscate illegally acquired fire arms and other weapons. In the end, the head of the local administration, indeed, was fired, and a decision was taken to have the strength of the local Cossack force (committed to patrol the township) meaningfully beefed up. Another major accident of that sort occurred in a rural district in the Volgograd region. At the close of July 2001, R. Lopatin was killed during a fistfight between local Cossacks and Chechens living in the township of Kletsky. Following his funeral, a huge crowd of mourners held a spontaneous gathering attended by 700–3 000 people. Afterwards, some of the attendees went to “chase the Chechens,” break up their vending stalls and torch a dormitory building where a Chechen family was living (the fire also ruining three sets of rooms occupied by ethnic Russians). A local shoe-mending business held by an Armenian was also destroyed. The community remained turbulent for several days. Passions ran so high that the regional prosecutor, vice-governor, and senior police officials became personally involved in defusing the conflict. To underscore, not only Chechens but also members of other ethnic communities have been discriminated against because of their ethnic origin. Until quite recently, numerous Moscow real estate agencies had been distributing their ads with these caveats: “leasing property only to Slavs” or “Caucasians not welcome.”(27) Recently in Moscow, near the metro-station “Universitet,” a club opened, whose doors featured this notice: “To avoid the risk of conflicts, Caucasians are not served.” The security elements had been briefed to turn off all prospective patrons with darker complexions and Caucasian accents (28). The high-profile “Dolphin” fitness center in Ekaterinburg made it a policy to offer its bath facilities, swimming pools, training equipment rooms and barbershops only to ethnic Russians. The fitness center had a special day (Monday) assigned for members of other ethnic communities. Ever more so, Chinese and Central Asians have been totally blacklisted “for failing to wash and comb their hair,” and “persons of Caucasian nationality” also blacklisted — “for paying excessive attention to the fair sex.” Interestingly enough, the Ekaterinburg city authorities not only refused to do anything about this sort of discrimination but also verbally backed the center’s manager for this “courageous move (29).” As concerns the Moscow city authorities, they have often justified their unlawful actions in this area by their concern for security of the city residents and the need to counter the unwelcome migrants. However, the problem of Moscow diasporas “has mostly been produced by the ethnic policy pursued by the city government,” according to a representative of one of the local Caucasian diaspora communities interviewed by the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily. He also pointed out that “the city government officials seem to be unaware of the fact that the ongoing discrimination on grounds of ethnicity has been affecting not only migrants but also the non-ethnic Russian Muscovites (30).” Inter-ethnic hatred also appears to have been fanned by the more popular mass media outlets backed by the Moscow city authorities. Some of the materials carried by those media have been instrumental to the shaping of an “enemy image” in society. It came as an unwelcome surprise to the human rights community when the noted reporter Yu. Kalinina from the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily, who had been positioning herself as a sympathizer of human rights issues, suddenly released a series of articles to have members of different ethnic communities “conveniently” categorized. She maintains that: Kalmyks are actually Russians, meaning “our own” people. The Chuvash people, the Udmurts and the Mordvins can also pass as as Russians. Of all the “friendly” Asians, it is only the Kazakhs that can more or less qualify as Russians, the same can hardly be said of either Tajiks or Uzbeks. The Caucasians most definitely cannot pass as Russians. Yu. Kalinina particularly draws the reader’s attention to the Caucasians being prolific, holding a risk that “in the not-too-distant future they might overwhelm the capital city and set up their own rules here (31).” Then, the reporter asks herself the following rhetoric question: “Should the Muscovites continue to be tolerant and watch as the city’s faces and ethnic mix increasingly resemble that of a southern mountain community?” (32) Notably, she particularly emphasizes the ongoing plight of Slavs in the Caucasus, where some of them have been used as slaves. The Caucasians just hate us and our responsive sentiments ate merely poor reflections of those venomous feelings that they have for us. I am most definitely reluctant to receive people who regard me with aggressive contempt. Even though they try to hide their true feelings, one can always sense where their hearts are… One just cannot but recall with a degree of satisfaction how, following the explosions of apartment buildings in Moscow in 1999, the Caucasian street vendors had their tomato crates overturned and crushed (33). After one has read such observations, one might have no problem with other newspapers carrying materials where one of the local neo-fascist leaders concludes, “We, ordinary Russians, are just fed up with the free-for-all ways that the outlandish migrants seek to maintain. Clearly, the time is ripe to put things right. We have been compelled to counter the influx of the “guests” through the use of nearly military strategies.” (34) Finally, as they proceed to limit the rights of ethnic minorities by barring them from taking an active part in the life of society, the authorities appear to be pushing minorities from the arena of normal social links and creating the conditions when loyalty to a given ethnic community becomes more important to them than adhering to the law. As a consequence, Russia’s ethnic minorities fail to integrate into society and various ethnic groups are increasingly alienated. Notably, these conditions also create a favorable environment for police arbitrariness and racketeering. Anti-Semitism Anti-Semitism has sprung deep roots in our country. This issue continues to remain in the limelight despite the fact that, to an outside observer, it seems to have taken backstage to problems associated with migrants from the Caucasus or Caucasians in general. In many cases, Anti-Semitism has been preserved as a major element of political ideologies maintained by the domestic nationalistic movements. Anti-Semitic pronouncements could invariably be heard in the statements made by leaders of regional Cossack organizations, heads of Russian nationalistic political parties or ethnic public associations based in the North Caucasus or the Volga-river areas. A surge of Anti-Semitism is currently observed in Chechnya. Anti-Semitic remarks have been made by leaders of Chechen formations, from A. Maskhadov to Sh. Basayev, by some Russian generals, and by the newly appointed leaders of the Chechen Republic. To provide an example to this effect, during his press conference, the head of the pro-Moscow Chechen administration, A. Kadyrov, let the “word” out that the notorious warlord Khattab was actually a Jew, rather than an Arab. The latest reports of regional human rights organizations indicate that the level of open Anti-Semitism in Russia is not high. Organized Anti-Semitic actions continue to be staged exclusively by the marginal groups such as the Russian National Unity (RNE) and skinheads. One exception are the Novgorod election campaigners that have spread the following leaflets: “Russian Novgorodians! You have a problem to eliminate. How many more years are you going to keep dying out without protesting, while the Zionist-Jewish rulers continue to thrive? Down with the Jews who are to blame for all our ills!” Though similar leaflets can still be seen infrequently in other Russian cities and regions, blatant Anti-Semitism seems to have ceased to be a real tool in politics; smarter campaigners now avoid using that sort of rhetoric. On the other hand, if we look broader than political rhetoric, we cannot but see numerous unsettling facts. For instance, recently, the city of Saratov has been the venue for an Anti-Semitic meeting and promotion of the book Time to Raise the Sword by V. Sosin, who makes no attempt to conceal his “basic sentiments” and “total Anti-Semitism” with regard to those who “keep the Russian man muzzled.”(35) On July 9, 2001, in Moscow, a prominent American human rights organization, UCSJ (Union of Council for Jews of the Former Soviet Union), launched the Russian version of their new publication on Anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Russia drafted by N. Butkevich. The book holds an in-depth analysis of manifestations of xenophobia, Anti-Semitism, racism and neo-fascism across 73 subjects of the Russian Federation. Alas, the main conclusion is not very consoling: Russia continues to be afflicted with passive Anti-Semitism, which is state-tolerated and allowed to “permeate the entire society from the unorganized households all the way though the governing structures.” UCSJ also points out that the victims of that broad-based attitude could hardly hope to be effectively protected either by police or public prosecutors. Notably, the book especially emphasizes that all of these things have to be examined against the backdrop of President Putin’s pronouncements of his firm commitment to do away with Anti-Semitism in the country. In the meantime, the UCSJ experts partly attribute the threat of Anti-Semitism in Russia to the fact that former KGB officers now fill many of the senior government posts and that the security services aggressively pursued an Anti-Semitic course under Soviet rule. The book carries concrete examples of the current FSB largely continuing to emulate its predecessors NKVD and KGB. Another major conclusion is that an effort is under way in the Russian Federation to “energize the repressive structures” and “revive the Anti-Semitic traditions in the country’s state security agencies,” which is “highly reminiscent of Soviet times.” In the book, it is particularly emphasized that “the failure to build a rule of law state in Russia, along with tremendous hardships created by the law enforcement and other coercive agencies using arbitrary practices and torture, have been condusive to the establishment of a most malign social environment for all Russian citizens.” (36) (18) Novye Izvestia (March 13, 2001). (19) As reported in the materials of the Conference “Human Rights in the South of Russia” organized by the Moscow Helsinki Group in Sochi (Krasnodar region) in November 2001. (20) Tribuna (October 24, 2001). (21) Novye Izvestia (May 17, 2001). (22) I. Mandrik, “Just a Pogrom.” Novye Izvestia (June 29, 2001). (23) Ibid. (24) Novye Izvestia (April 2, 2001, ¹56). (25) A. Politkovskaya, “The Fall of the Hitmen.” Novaya Gazeta April 9, 2001). (26) Novye Izvestia (October 23, 2001, ¹192). (27) Novye Izvestia (November 14, 2001). (28) Izvestia (November 29, 2001). (29) Novye Izvestia (July 17, 2001). (30) E. Egorova, “Person of Moscow Nationality.” Moskovsky Komsomolets (April 13, 2001). (31) Moskovsky Komsomolets (July 26, 2001). (32) Yu. Kalinina, “Peace, Friendship, Chewing Gum.” Moskovsky Komsomolets (November 1, 2001). (33) Moskovsky Komsomolets (August 9, 2001). (34) Novye Izvestia (November 13, 2001). (35) Novye Izvestia (November 10, 2001). (36) Please note that this is a backward translation. Back |
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