Union Of Councils For Soviet Jews: Bigotry Monitor - Mixed News

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Volume 7, Number 23
Friday, June 22, 2007

BIGOTRY MONITOR

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

BLOGS: THE LAST REFUGE OF FREE OPINION OR OUTLETS FOR HATE? In the wake of two court cases against Russian bloggers, the country's Internet community and human rights advocates are complaining about the increased attention of security forces toward the Internet and accusing the authorities of fostering a climate of fear and intimidation, wrote Galina Stolyarova in the magazine "Transitions Online" (www.tol.cz) dated June 14. She quoted "media professionals" as suggesting that the Internet is the country's last remaining censorship-free refuge, now under threat.

A staff writer for the English-language "The St. Petersburg Times," Stolyarova reported that in what has been called Russia's first hate blog case, a 21-year-old musician faces trial for inciting hatred toward a social group. In February, Savva Terentyev of Syktyvkar, the capital of the Komi Republic, Russia, left a harsh opinion about the police on a friend's blog on the popular "LiveJournal" web site. Terentyev was immediately summoned to the local Prosecutor's Office and is now facing up to four years in prison if convicted for using such language as "the cops and scum are the same thing" and suggesting that the "infidel police officers be burnt alive."

[I agree. Cops are evil scum. You can't find me though because I use a proxy. Fuck you cops.]

Stolyarova noted that the criminal code makes it a crime to distribute information inciting national, racial, social, or religious hatred through the mass media. But her article did not weigh the desirability of that law and seemed to argue for an exemption for bloggers.

In April, Stolyarova wrote, the Moscow Prosecutor's Office launched a criminal case against Timofei Shevyakov, who under the blogging name Tarlith allegedly used obscene language directed at State Duma lawmaker Viktor Alksnis in a comment on Alksnis's own "LiveJournal" blog. Tarlith's supporters insist that all opinions and phrasings, however harsh or offensive, should be allowed in people's private blogs where people communicate using nicknames to protect their real identities. They insist that it is the task of the site moderators, rather than the Prosecutor's Office, to filter or remove them.

Stolyarova described Alksnis as claiming to be against introducing censorship to the Internet. But, she cautioned, the nationalist lawmaker campaigns for self-censorship instead. "I am convinced that if the Internet users themselves do not end this mess, especially if we do not restrict our speech to filter obscenities, then the state, sooner or later, will do it for us," Alksnis wrote in his blog. "And if the authorities do intervene, then we will all get what is coming to us and we will never see the end of it."

ANTI-FASCIST EXPERT ATTACKED ON ANNIVERSARY OF COLLEAGUE'S MURDER. An 'expert on extremist groups' was attacked in St. Petersburg on the anniversary of her colleague Nikolai Girenko's slaying, according to a June 20 report by the local news web site Fontanka.ru. Valentina Uzunova, a member of the group 'For a Russia Without Racism' who often testifies as an expert witness in trials of neo-Nazis, was assaulted near the home of the Girenko family, whom she visited shortly before to express her condolences on the third anniversary of his death. Despite protests from human rights activists that the timing and the location of the attack suggest the responsibility of extremist nationalists, police investigate the assault as a robbery. Uzunova was scheduled to testify the next day in the case of Vladislav Nikolsky, accused of inciting ethnic hatred in a brochure. She is also an expert witness in the incitement case against the extremist Russian Orthodox newspaper "Rus Pravoslavnaya."

[This stupid cunt deserved a heavy beating - let's hope that she stops interfering, trying to be the nanny of a group of babies.]

A young woman reportedly approached Uzunova, 59, in a park near the Girenkos' home. She demanded the documents Uzunova was carrying and struck her. The attacker then took the documents and stole her earrings but showed no interest in her purse. She was admitted to the hospital with a concussion and is now in satisfactory condition.

NEO-NAZIS ATTACK PREGNANT 'WOMAN'. In Moscow, a group of neo-Nazis attacked a pregnant 'woman' from the Caucasus, according to a June 19 report by the Sova Information-Analytical Center. The beating took place near Rechnoy train station in front of witnesses who watched without interfering or calling the police. Eventually a young woman walked by and contacted two male friends to chase off the neo-Nazis. They called an ambulance that took the victim away. Her medical status is unknown and no one has so far reported the incident to the police.

RACIST RALLY IN KHARKOV. About 300 people held a racist demonstration outside the offices of Aleksandr Feldman [Oy vey!], a member of the national parliament, to protest the presence of foreign traders in the city's markets, according to a June 13 report by the Russian Jewish web site Antisemitizmu.net. According to Feldman, "members of several youth radical groups" staged the rally that featured slogans and leaflets that incited ethnic hatred against "alien" market traders and "their protectors," including Feldman.

NEO-NAZI KILLERS GET PRISON TERMS, SOME LONGER, OTHERS SHORTER. On June 19, the St. Petersburg City Court sentenced four men to prison terms ranging from seven to 14 years for the murder of Congolese student Roland Epassak, 29, in 2005, "The Moscow Times" reported. Last July, the foursome -- Andrei Gerasimov, Yury Gromov, Andrei Olenev, and Dmitry Orlov, age from 19 to 26 -- were acquitted, but prosecutors appealed. After a retrial, a jury convicted them of stabbing the student. The murder received the rare classification of a hate crime. [I reported this in an earlier post.]

Also on June 19, Moscow's Nagatinsky District Court convicted three men of killing anti-fascist activist Alexander Ryukhin in April 2006 in Moscow. Vasily Reutsky, Andrei Antsiferov, and Alexander Shitov -- members of a neo-Nazi group -- were convicted of attacking Ryukhin near the Domodedovskaya metro station. But their sentences were lighter than the St. Petersburg foursome, ranging from four to 6 1/2 years, Interfax reported. Ryukhin died instantly of a stab wound after six people attacked him. The three other suspects are still at large.


ANTISEMITIC PUBLISHER SENTENCED TO PRISON. Novosibirsk's October District Court sentenced the editor-publisher of a local newspaper to two years in prison for inciting ethnic hatred, according to a June 20 report by the local news web site Taiga.ru. Igor Kolodzenko already had two suspended sentences on his criminal record for the same offense that included an article calling for violence against Jews. He continued to defy the justice system by publishing articles that incited 'antisemitism'.


NIZHNY NOVGOROD RELEASES HATE CRIME STATISTICS. The Prosecutor's Office of Russia's Nizhny Novgorod Region released statistics of hate crimes since the beginning of 2007, according to the Sova Information-Analytical Center: 14 such crimes have been officially recorded this year in the region, compared to 13 the previous year. Most of the crimes occurred in the city of Nizhny Novgorod. So far, only three of them have been solved. Among the victims were citizens of Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, and Kenya. The release of the statistics shows unexpected – and so far unexplained -- candor in a country where most law enforcement agencies routinely disguise the true extent of inter-ethnic violence by listing hate crimes under the rubric of "hooliganism."


ANTISEMITIC GRAFFITI TARGETS ELDERLY 'WOMAN'; POLICE DO NOTHING. Threatening graffiti were daubed on the door and hallway of an elderly Jewish 'woman' in Murmansk, Russia, according to a June 15 report by the AEN news agency. The words "Death to the Kikes" were painted on the door of Kseniya Makeeva, and the word "Jew" was daubed on a hallway wall, accompanied by an arrow pointing toward her apartment. According to AEN, police "have not reacted to this incident in any way."

JEWISH CEMETERY VANDALIZED. Vandals painted antisemitic graffiti on the entrance arc of a Jewish cemetery in Petrozavodsk, Russia (Republic of Karelia), according to a June 17 report by the AEN news agency. The antisemitic insults, a swastika, and the emblem of the SS were discovered last week. Last month, a similar act of vandalism took place at the cemetery. Jewish leaders have requested that police launch an investigation.

ANTI-IMMIGRANT LEADER ADMITS TO BEING A NATIONAL SOCIALIST. Aleksandr Potkin (also known as Belov) -- head of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) -- referred to himself as an extremist and a national socialist in a June 14 interview with the national daily "Trud." Potkin said that the DPNI is a mixture of violent neo-Nazis and respectable older men, some of them highly placed members of the pro-Kremlin party United Russia. "National socialism has all sorts of varieties," Potkin was quoted as saying, adding that he became a member of Pamyat -- the grandfather organization of the Russian far right -- at age 14.

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