|
English Language Page Against the background of slogans proclaimed in messages from the President of the Russian Federation about the prohibition against manifestations of anti-Semitism, in actual practice, the application of laws with respect to individuals committing deeds on account of nationalistic hatred has not undergone any change. CRIMES AGAINST JEWS, JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS AND JEWISH PROPERTY The results of the monitoring revealed 24 serious incidents having occurred involving Jews and targets connected to the working of Jewish religious and social organizations during 2001. Compared to the year 2000 (18 incidents reported) this figure grew. In addition to this, the number of cities from which such incidents were reported increased — to 13 in the year 2001 compared with 7 in 2000. Here we relate only a few incidents. On the evening of September 23, students of the Moscow yeshiva (a Jewish religious school), Mesivta, were attacked by skinheads in Marina Roscha on the road to the dormitory. The young racists screaming “beat the Kikes” attempted to beat up the Jewish adolescents. The majority of the yeshiva students were able to run away, however some of them received serious injuries. The skinheads threatened to continue along similar lines in the synagogue. A criminal case was initiated based on these facts. Also in Moscow, on July 31, at approximately 8.00 p.m., in the neighborhood of Sumskoi Drive, Valentin G. was attacked and beaten by an unknown assailant screaming anti-Semitic slogans. As a result of the attack, Valentin G.’s eye was severely injured. The victim filed a statement with the police station of Severnoe Chertanovo district. The assailant has yet to be found. On September 21, in Omsk, unknown hooligans attacked four Jews that were coming out of a synagogue. They knocked the hat off the head of one of the victims, after which all four turned and ran. No one suffered any physical harm. In all these and similar incidents the victims suffered only because they were Jews. During the year, regional monitors noted a wide array of attacks on synagogues and Jewish community centers. Swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans appeared on the walls of these buildings. On the night of June 14–15, in the city of Velikie Luki (Pskov region), unknown persons using rocks broke the widows of the Jewish charity center, Magen Heced, recently opened in an apartment on the first floor of a residential building. Three windows were broken. Law enforcement authorities refused to initiate a criminal case. In June in Kostroma, there was an attempt to burn down the local synagogue. With this aim in mind, a bunch of garbage was set afire near the restored synagogue building. Thankfully, the building suffered no damage. In Volgograd on July 16, swastikas were painted all over the walls of a building housing a Jewish community center. Those responsible have not been tracked down. On December 8, unknown persons broke the widows in a synagogue in Omsk using bricks. Those responsible have not been tracked down. On October 6, in Tyumen, local racists targeted a synagogue upon which repair work had just been completed the day before. At approximately 8.00 p.m., those conducting the pogrom broke 22 of the synagogue’s stained glass windows with rocks and sticks. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by skinheads, members of the Tyumen branch of the People’s Nationalist Party (NNP). The group posted a corresponding statement on their web-site, “Arayan Tyumen Skinheads.” (2) The statement read, in detail, “every one of us threw at least two rocks in the Kike-Mason building. We’ve never heard a more pleasant sound in our entire lives, than the sound of the Kike’s glass breaking. Then we got on a bus and left. We reminded the Kikes yet again that they have no place here. The next time, instead of the rocks we’ll throw Molotov cocktails.” After an array of publications about this incident, on October 12, the web-site “Arayan Tyumen Skinheads” ceased to exist. It should be noted that the skinheads had thrown rocks at the synagogue and threatened reprisals against the builders earlier, when the building was in the process of reconstruction. Therefore, one cannot consider the occurrence of the pogrom unexpected. In Kursk, on the night of December 9, on the eve of the Jewish holiday Channukah, the traditional slogan used in pogroms, “Beat the Kikes — save Russia!” appeared on the walls of the building in which the Jewish center, Heced Baruh, was located. The director of the center, Igor Buhman, turned to the law enforcement authorities requesting that an investigation be conducted into this event. In Tomsk on the night of the November 23, unknown hooligans painted swastikas and other Nazi symbols all over the facade prepared for the opening of the Tomsk Jewish Community Center (the opening took place on November 25). In the aforementioned city of Velikie Luki, in December, the building housing the local music school, where a holiday concert was taking place in celebration of Channukah, was painted over with swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans. Particular disturbances give rise to a number of similar incidents in Moscow. Thus, on the night of September 23, unknown hooligans using black paint, painted anti-Semitic slogans and fascist symbols on the facade of the building housing the Moscow Choral Synagogue on Bolshoi Spasoglinishchevsky Street. After an appeal to the capital’s law enforcement authorities (Moscow City Police Directorate) by a representative of Moscow’s Jewish religious community, a criminal case was initiated. On the same day, on the door of the office of the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations (KEROOR) located on Pokrovka Street, an unknown person carved the word, “Kikes.” Officials of the KEROOR did not appeal to the authorities. In October, an official in the upper echelons of Federation of Jewish Communities (FEOR), upon returning from synagogue in Marinoi Grove, after celebrating Simhat Tora, noticed that the back door of his apartment was severely damaged and that a swastika was painted on the wall nearby. On the night of October 28–29, anti-Semitic writings and drawings appeared on one of the buildings of the Maymonida State Classical (formerly Jewish) Academy scrawled with black paint. On one wall “Death to the Kikes!” was written with a swastika nearby. On another wall, the same text with a Star of David. Officials from the academy did not complain to law enforcement authorities. The reluctance of the representatives from the various Jewish organizations to seek out the assistance of law-enforcement is explained by their distrust of the results of the work of such authorities. BANDITRY The most widespread manifestations of anti-Semitism involve defacement of religious objects and Jewish cemeteries. Over 100 graves were defaced in the cities of Perm, Arzamas, Velikie Luki, Krasnoyarsk and Saratov. For example, in the city of Velikie Luki on the night of June 12–13, a Jewish cemetery was defaced. Forty-three gravestones suffered various forms of damage, a significant portion of which were toppled and broken. In the village of Vyazovenki, in the Smolensk region, a monument erected on the mass grave of Jews from the Smolensk Ghetto shot during the Great Patriotic War was defaced in June. The monument was covered with anti-Semitic and fascist slogans as well as fascist symbols. On the night of July 14–15, an act of vandalism occurred in the Jewish section of the city cemetery in Arzamas (Nizhnii Novgorod region). Over 30 Jewish graves were defaced. It should be noted that the pogrom in the cemetery took place on the eve of the elections for the head of the administration of the Nizhnii Novgorod region (July 15) and was not registered by law enforcement authorities until the voting was completed. On the night of August 18–19, an act of vandalism occurred on the central tree-lined path of the Jewish cemetery in the Sovyetsky neighborhood of the city of Krasnoyarsk. Unknown persons drew swastikas and left writings of an insulting character on gravestone monuments. The Perm prosecutor’s office began an investigation of the defacement of Jewish graves in the Yegoshihinskoe cemetery in the city of Perm. In the summer of 2001, the gravestones of that cemetery were toppled, swastikas were drawn on them and “Russia for Russians!” was written as well. This is already the second case in the present year of Jewish graves in the city’s historic cemetery being subject to attack. In the autumn, unknown criminals marked Hitler’s birthday in a similar fashion. In Kaliningrad, on November 5, a memorial headstone on the grave of Rabbi Israel Salanter, restored on August 2, 2001, was destroyed. In addition to this, the ruffians tore the gates of the cemetery out by their roots. “Death to the Kikes!” and a depiction of a swastika appeared on the memorial plaque dedicated to the Jews who died during the Holocaust. On the night of March 28, in the center of Kaliningrad, an act of vandalism was committed involving the ritual Channukah minora (i.e., the ritual candelabra). The Channukah minora was set in the center square of the city. Unknown ruffians drove up in a passenger car and tying a cable to the base of the minora tore it from its supports. According to the representative of the local Jewish community, neither the city government nor the mass media reacted to this act of vandalism. In first-place in the count of incidents of vandalism is Saratov, where during the year 2001, Jewish cemeteries were wrecked a minimum of five times. On the night of October 15 alone, 60 gravestones were defaced. Unfortunately, the cited examples are not unique. It is largely because victims do not always (far from it!) appeal to law enforcement authorities and representatives of human rights organizations, that finding out about all the incidents of this type and more, actually getting detailed information about them is impossible at this point. However, together with the growth of the number of community centers and other Jewish organizations in the regions, the monitoring of manifestations of anti-Semitism is growing more accurate . UNIMPEDED DISSEMINATION OF WRITTEN MATERIALS OF AN ANTI-SEMITIC CHARACTER As in earlier years, in 2001 a variety of anti-Semitic literature was widely available in Russia — in book stores, street stalls, kiosks in buildings housing regional legislative assemblies, in the State Duma of the Russian Federation, and in the kiosks selling church literature where anti-Semitic publications were on the same footing as the Orthodox press and books with religious content. The most notorious and telling story of this connection is set in the Sverdlovsk region where in November 2001, sixteen national-cultural autonomous associations and organizations made an open statement, demanding that the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ekaterinburg diocese cease the dissemination of materials that incite ethnic and religious hatred. Among the materials disseminated by the Orthodox Church which foment ethnic and religious hatred and offend the dignity of the Jewish people, the authors of this address took special note of the following materials: The authors emphasize that: in answer to a complaint by the Jewish National-Cultural Autonomous Organization of the Sverdlovsk region to the prosecutor of the Sverdlovsk region, made on July 11, 2001, and based on the publication and dissemination of these materials, a letter was received from the prosecutor’s office of the city of Ekaterinburg. The letter contained notification of a refusal to initiate a criminal case based on Article 5, Section 2, and Article 113 of the RSFSR Criminal Procedure Code (the refusal was based on the absence of the elements of a criminal act, although an assessment of the contents of the said materials was not even carried out). Such an answer from the prosecutor’s office evokes only outrage and creates an impression that the prosecutor does not want to take action in opposition to the incitement of ethnic and religious hatred (5). Later, on December 13, 2001, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation in the Uralsk federal district did initiate a criminal case based on indications of the presence of the elements of the crime envisaged in Article 282, Section 1 of the RF Criminal Code. After this, the materials were sent to the department of the Sverdlovsk regional prosecutor’s office charged with the investigation of particularly important cases. Specialists were presented with the Pravoslavniy Vestnik, the Pravoslavniy Gazeta and the Sergei Neilus’s book, Close to the Doors. The texts of the aforementioned publications were studied taking into account their historic, religious, linguistic and cultural aspects. As was noted in the decision to dismiss the criminal case, “none of the responsible parties in the diocese were intending by their actions or thoughts to debase anyone’s ethnic dignity or incite ethnic or religious hatred, since this is contrary to the basic principles of the Russian Orthodox Church.” In connection with the initiated criminal case, the press secretary of the Ekaterinburg diocese, Boris Kosinsky, stated that S. Neilus’ book, Close to the Doors, was examined by linguistic experts more than once and over a period of many years no complaints to the author arose from any of the representatives of traditional religious orders. S. Neilus is not a political but a spiritual writer and that, they say, he himself denies the presence in his writings any reason for religious discord. The same goes for Pravoslavniy Gazeta as it is a spiritual and not a secular publication (6). It should be noted that in February of 2002, fourteen socio-political figures, including deputies of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Greshnevikov, Chuyev and Shulgà appealed to President Putin with a letter (and also with official Parliamentarian requests to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, V. Ustinov, the director of FSB, N. Patrushev, the authorized representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Uralsk federal district, P. Latyshev, the Governor of the Sverdlovsk region, E. Rossel, and the Deputy Prosecutor General for the Uralsk federal district, Yu. Zolotov) regarding the criminal case in the Ekaterinburg diocese (7). In the letter it was suggested that the case initiated on Article 282, Section 1 contradicted the policy of cooperation between the government and the Russian Orthodox Church, including cooperation in the regions. Calls for interrogations “demean the spiritual calling and dignity” of Archbishop Vikenty of Ekaterinburg and Verkhotoursk and other church officials. The authors of the letter also claim that S. Neilus’ book, Close to the Doors, “does not contain any appeals to hate or discrimination with respect to the representatives of any group,” the same goes for the poems of Father Roman and the article by Deacon Andrei Kurayev, mentioned by the members of the Sverdlovsk branch of Congress of Ethnic Associations. In conclusion, the authors of the letter ask for cooperation in an objective examination of the case and call upon their highly placed recipients to “defend church officials of the Ekaterinburg diocese and the Archbishop Vikenty from attack from forces seeking to destabilize our society.” Of these “forces” definitively named are M. Oshtrakh, the head of the Jewish National-Cultural Autonomous Organization of the Sverdlovsk region, and R. Spektor, the head of the Congress of Ethnic Associations of Russia. On March 5, 2002, the criminal case filed under Article 282, Section 1 based on the publications in the Ekaterinburg diocese was dismissed for lack of evidence of a crime (8). On March 19, 2002, the Prosecutor General confirmed that the closure of the case in Ekaterinburg was lawful. This story is a clear illustration of all of the following simultaneously: the impunity enjoyed by the disseminators of anti-Semitic literature, the lack of intervention from the upper echelons of the Russian Orthodox Church in anti-Semitic policy on the ground, the inability or unwillingness of the prosecutors’ offices to take these cases to court, the anti-Semitic leanings of an array of Russian parliamentarians and the unwillingness of federal forces to demonstrate any political will in the area of preventing anti-Semitic propaganda and other methods of inciting ethnic hatred. INTERNET Technological progress yields great gains, including in the field of anti-Semitic activity. Just as in many western countries, in Russia the Internet is gradually becoming one of the key ways to disseminate anti-Semitic propaganda. Regardless of the fact that only 2% of the population, approximately three million people, use the Internet regularly, ultra-nationalistic organizations have already become aware of its potential opportunities. See, for instance, Hate on the Russian Internet, a June 2001 report by the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (USCJ) The number of anti-Semitic web-sites and forums is not fixed but we can confirm that at the end of the year there were not less than one hundred. A large part of these were individual projects or the sites of minor groups, attracting the attention of isolated users. On the other hand, constantly updated web pages of prominent organizations, news resources and forums attract up to several hundred visitors per day. Russian legislation does not have specialized laws regulating the content of web-sites. Nonetheless, the majority of providers, to escape potential problems, are not inclined to carry nationalistic propaganda. This is why the majority of such sites (and this is generally not the “one day and out” sites but specifically those enjoying maximum visitation) prefer safe hosting abroad, in . com and . org zones. It should be noted that with the support of Federal Program “On Formation of the Core of Tolerant Consciousness and Prophylactic Measures against Extremism in Russian Society” at this moment, work is underway on a project limiting the access of primary, secondary and university students to nationalistic materials on the Internet. At the very least, access to such sites from computers in educational institutions should be blocked. THE REACTION OF THE GOVERNMENT TO MANIFESTATIONS OF ANTI-SEMITISM In 2001, President Putin made an array of statements regarding the necessity of taking strong action against racism. Specifically, speaking at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers, the President called upon the government to resist the negative actions motivated by racism, the number of which, by all accounts, is growing. A few times V. Putin also directly condemned anti-Semitism and just last year, met with Jewish leaders to express his support to them. Besides this, purposeful action in the fight against anti-Semitism has not been taken. Legal actions initiated in response to the publication of anti-Semitic literature are delayed in every way possible and mainly fall apart before trial. According to the statistics we have, only four people were convicted in the six months in 2001, of offenses under Article 282 of the Criminal Code (incitement of ethnic hostility). Real, practical steps in the search for and punishment of those guilty of racist crimes that have already been committed have not in a practical sense been taken. There is obviously only one exception — the conviction of a Satanist, who participated in a pogrom of a Jewish cemetery in Samara. The most important structural element of the governmental plan to prevent the propaganda of hate, intolerance and fascism, is the RF Ministry of the Press, and it inadequately performs this task. At the same time, according to data from the Anti-Defamation League, the number of periodic publications propagandizing anti-Semitism has risen significantly in 2001. The Ministry of the Press issued warnings on this subject to only two informational agencies. In comparison: in the year 2000 seven periodic publications and four publishers received similar warnings. The State Duma of the Russian Federation, where political centrists comprise a majority, twice rejected a draft address in which President Putin asked for official condemnation of “manifestations of anti-Semitism , nationalism and fascism in Russia..” The majority of Russian legislators have consistently refused to participate in any discussions on the problem of extremism, maintaining that ultra-nationalism and anti-Semitism are not issues of primary importance. (1) In this chapter, we are focusing on concrete examples of manifestations of anti-Semitism in the federal center and in the outer regions in the year 2001 while attempting to escape overlap with other chapters of this collection. For this reason in particular we have not touched upon topics such as anti-Semitism in political life, the activities of ultra-radical groups and so on. These are all covered in corresponding chapters. What is more, we are cognizant that the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (UCSJ) and its Moscow Bureau on Human Rights are now publishing their third in a series, Anti-semitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecutions in the Russian Regions — 2000–2001. For that, and daily up-dates, see UCSJ’s website, www/fsu.monitor.com. (2) http://www.tash88.narod.ru. (3) “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” from the moment of their publication (in 1905) were used to stimulate pogroms against Jews and by Hitler in his ideology — as the basis for the mass murder of Jews. (4) See: http://www.rusk.ru/News/02/1/news23_01.htm. (5) Statement of the Sverdlovsk Section of the Congress of Ethnic Associations of Russia, see: http://www.rusk.ru/News/02/1/news23_01.htm. (6) “Sverdlovsk Region: in the Ekaterinburg Diocese They Treat Accusations of Anti-Semitism Calmly,” Regiony Rossii Info (January 14, 2002 — http://www.regions.ru). (7) The text of the letter was reprinted in “In Defense of the Ekaterinburg Diocese,” Russky Vestnik (2002, ¹8–9). (8) The letter from the Deputy Prosecutor General of the Uralsk federal district, U. Zolotov to Archbishop Vikenty published on the website of Russky Vestnik (April 16, 2002 — http://www.rv.ru). Back |
Íàøà êíîïêà  |
|