Coalition Against Hate

European Jewish Union (EJU) held a conference in Brussels on 'European Integration and its impact on anti-Semitism', on September 4, 2012

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:17:02 -0400

PRESS RELEASE—-FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

London, September 6, 2012

European Jewish Union (EJU) held a conference in Brussels on ‘European Integration and its impact on anti-Semitism’, on September 4, 2012

European Jewish Union CEO Tomer Orni, the organizer of the conference together with the European Jewish Parliament and Tzedek, the Association of European Jewish Lawyers, opened the discussion on Tuesday by insisting “anti-Semitism is part of Europe’s DNA”. “It is rooted in Europe and there were always different sources of motivations for anti-Semitism.”
“Today, it’s all about leadership, law enforcement and education,” he insisted.

Orni’s remarks followed the welcome address by the incoming Israeli Ambassador to the European Union, David Walzer, who asked “What makes an anti-Semite anti-Israeli?” Continuing to answer the much-disputed question, he espoused that “anti-Semitism is not a politically correct term and so is now described as hatred of Zionism, hatred of the Jewish entity.”

Deploring the fact that many people make no distinction between Jews and Israelis, the Israeli envoy stressed that “there is a clear distinction between burning a synagogue and demonstrating outside an Israeli embassy”.

“Many Jews live outside of Israel, but people don’t make that distinction,” he added. “You cannot equate attacking religious Jews with attacking the Jewish State.”

Referring to his previous diplomatic posting in Denmark, where the chairperson of the Danish Palestinian Society lobbied him to redefine the Jewish State as “a State for all its citizens”, he added to rousing applause from the crowd, “why is ok for so many countries to define themselves as Christian but not for Israel to define itself as a State for the Jews”.

Other speakers at this second annual conference included European Jewish Parliament Co-Chairman Joel Rubinfeld who said that Europe must find a solution to the age-old problem of anti-Semitism, which he said threatens the core values of the EU itself.

“We are here to guarantee the “EU of never again’ will prevail. The future of Jews in Europe is at stake but also the future of Europe itself,” he declared, invoking the historical background to the formation of the European Union.

Also present was Andrew Cutting, Liaison Officer for the Council of Europe, an organisation he described as the “conscience of the EU.”

Invoking the recent debate over Bosnia Herzegovina’s constitution, which prevents Jews from standing for high office, he invoked EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule’s statement that such a country would not be accepted as an EU member state until the constitution is changed.

“Increased vigilance is needed to learn from the past and to ensure tolerance remains a vital part of European values,” he added.

A representative of another country seeking accession to the EU, Vesko Garcevic, Ambassador of Montenegro to Belgium and NATO, spoke of his country’s unique “respect for religious groups across the world”, as he invoked Montenegro’s mutual cooperation with its Jewish community, extending back to WWII, where the former Yugoslavian state was one of the few countries in Europe “to offer a safe haven for fleeing Jews during the Holocaust”.

In February, the country’s Prime Minister Igor Luksic signed an agreement with Jewish community leaders recognising Judaism as the country’s fourth official religion and setting the stage for a revival of the tiny community with the prospect of the opening of a synagogue in the capital, Podgorica.

Adding that no anti-Semitic incidents against Jews have been recorded in recent history in the small Balkan country, he said that “the history of the EU in the 20th century and the break-up of Balkan States reminds us peace can only be achieved through tolerance and mutual understanding”.

“These values must be continued by future generations, which will judge us not just by what we say, but by what we do,” he continued.

The lack of data collecting mechanisms in several EU member states “limits the ability of policy stakeholders at national and international level from taking action on anti-Semitism,” levelled Henri Nickels, Programme Manager at the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), a Vienna-based body which helps individual EU countries in reconciling fundamental human rights and tolerance with the implementation of EU law.

Although doubts remained about the reliability of some national figures on anti-Semitism, “enough is available to know that anti-Semitism remains a serious concern,” he said, adding that as anti-Semitic incidents returned to their previous levels before Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2009, it “confirmed events in Israel correlate to anti-Semitic incidents in the EU”.

Polish Member of the European Parliament MEP Michal Kaminski spoke of Israel and the Jewish nation being part of the European heritage, adding that “every Israeli soldier defends not just Israel from terrorism, but also Europe. “The values of Israel and the Jews are also the values of the EU.”

Heralding Israel’s right to defend itself, he said that “although Israel is strong enough to do so, it also has friends within the EU and within the European Parliament who will defend it”.

He continued to berate Europe for being soft on Iran, which he accused of stirring up a new Holocaust, insisting that “in Iran’s case, Israel is only the first step - as with Hitler, Jews were only the first step”.

Describing the battle against anti-Semitism as a fight “for a better Europe and for European values”, he added: “We will fight anti-Semitism, we will win. We will fight terrorism, and we will win.”

“Anti-Zionism is the key to re-invigorating anti-Semitism,” asserted Flemish politician and author Andre Gantman. “Anti-Semitism is the new detergent to eliminate Auschwitz,” he added, invoking the phenomenon of Holocaust revisionism.

Whilst many speakers differentiated between the sources of anti-Semitism in western Europe, where it is often justified by the situation in Israel, and eastern Europe, where anti-Semitism is seen as more ‘traditional’ and endemic in its history, with like in Latvia, a revival of Nazism, Claude Moniquet, CEO of the European Strategic Intelligence & Security Centre (ESISC) asserted it’s “naive” to say Communism was not synonymous with anti-Semitism, as by denouncing the phenomenon as bourgeois and distinct from Socialist ideals, nothing was done to counter it and it was allowed to flourish in Communist states.

“Communism was imposed by the outside” on Soviet states, he added, and since many of the original Russian communists were Jewish, they were vilified by Soviet nationalists. Referring to the rise of anti-Semitism in the Communist world in 1967, he said it was notable that “as Jewish persecution declined (elsewhere), it became part of government policy” in the Soviet states.

A key point of contention for several of the speakers was the Boycott Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, with Rubinfeld describing it as “one of the tools for those hoping to expel Jews from the international community and wipe Israel off the face of the map.”

Is the call for a boycott of Israel ‘anti-Semitism’ ?

BDS campaigner and Free University of Brussels (ULB) Law Professor Eric David contested that far from constituting anti-Semitism, “BDS is a response to Israeli violations of international law such as its occupation of Palestinian territories and a way to avoid complicity in war crimes.”

His comments, which were clearly not shared by many in the conference, were immediately refuted by Belgian lawyer Christophe Goossens who argued that “the real issue is not the fact that Israel exists (as a legal entity), but from a moral perspective, does it have a right to exist as a Jewish State”.

Putting it to the panel that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitism as it denies the Jewish people the right to its own state, whilst inconsistently contesting the Palestinians have a right to their own state, he insisted “anti-Zionism is not compatible with the view that Israel has a right to exist”.

David retorted to jeers from the crowd that “Israel has a moral right to exist if it withdraws to its 1967 borders”.

Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Institute Shimon Samuels berated “Jewish identity theft” for defining modern anti-Semitism, blaming the “seemingly incongruous conflation between the Holocaust and Soviet genocide” in eastern Europe, as well as the “appropriation” of the terms “BDS and apartheid” from South Africa to describe Israel policy, which he claimed delegitimized the phenomenon of anti-Semitism.

Slamming the international community for its muted condemnation of the Iranian regime’s threats against Israel, he said its increasingly hateful comments were “designed to test the limits of EU timidity”, which he described as the “anti-Semitism of indifference”.

“The convergence of anti-Semitism with terrorism and nuclear intent targets not only every Jew, but is a global threat,” he concluded.

For lawyer Mischael Modrikamen, who is President of a Belgian populist political party, “permanent statements by the EU condemning Israel also fuels anti-Semitism.”

Former Turkish parliamentarian and European Jewish Parliament foreign affairs committee co-chairman Cefi Kamhi alleged the threat of anti-Semitism came equally from within the Jewish sphere, characterising the biggest inner-communal problems as deriving from indifference, ignorance and immunity.

“There are indifferent Jews, there are ignorant Jews who don’t know their rights, and there are immune Jews who think they’re safe in their habitat and don’t think of other more vulnerable Jews,” he said.

After he followed previous speakers in pointing to the power of legislation to “comply with the needs of the times”, British lawyer and fellow EP committee co-chairman Gordon Hausmann responded that “legal action can only be taken if there is a law - in many EU countries there are no such laws”, adding anti-Semitism could often only be addressed legally through the criminal courts.

Some speakers, like European Jewish Association (EJA) head Rabbi Menachem Margolin, also mentioned attacks against Jewish religious rituals such as the circumcision and the shechita, the kosher slaughter of animals, as a sign that “Jews are not welcome in Europe”.

Hausmann added that whilst laws were formerly invoked as tool to attack Israel and Israeli interests, such as banning key political figures guilty of “war crimes” on account of having served in the Israel Defence Force from entry into individual EU states, “now there is a legal onslaught against circumcision and kashrut”, which needs to be addressed according to legal definitions of causing harm.

A task force has been constituted within the European Jewish Parliament to deal with different aspects of the fight against anti-Semitism.

For further information please email info@eju.org

Hungary's far-right calls for zero tolerance against Roma

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:11:30 -0400

By Gergely Szakacs

Reuters – Sat, Aug 25, 2012

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary’s opposition far-right Jobbik party called on Saturday for zero tolerance against what it called Roma crime and parasitism, and said any member of the large minority who did not conform should leave the country.

Tensions between the 500,000 to 700,000 impoverished Roma and other Hungarians in the country of 10 million have risen at a time when Hungary is mired in its second recession in four years and unemployment is stuck in double figures.

“We need to roll back these hundreds of thousands of Roma outlaws. We must show zero tolerance towards Roma crime and parasitism,” Jobbik chairman Gabor Vona told a rally of several hundred people in Heroes’ Square in central Budapest.

“If they do not want to go, we will seek help from Brussels,” said Vona, whose party - the second biggest opposition group in parliament - wants to steer Hungary out of the European Union.

“We must ask them to adopt several hundred thousand of our citizens for a few years and try to educate them in European culture. Once they have succeeded, we can welcome them back.”

The Roma minority in Hungary suffers from frequent discrimination in the labor market.

On Friday, the government condemned the rally, which was staged to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the foundation of the banned paramilitary Hungarian Guard movement, a Jobbik ally.

(Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Ralph Gowling)

Hundreds gather to mark massive Holocaust pogrom in Russia

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 16:09:31 -0400

(JTA) — More than 1,000 people gathered at Rostov-on-Don, which 70 years ago witnessed the worst Holocaust atrocity in Russia.

Wearing arm bands marked with a Star of David, the crowd on Sunday marched to the mass grave of approximately 27,000 people executed by German soldiers near the city in 1942. Most of the victims were Jewish, according to the Russian Jewish Congress.

Leading the procession was Rabbi Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor and former chief rabbi of Israel.

“The unprecedented turnout shows the memory of the Jewish genocide in Rostov is shared and preserved by Jews and non-Jews,” Russian Jewish Congress President Yury Kanner said.

Last year the memorial site became the subject of a legal fight between Kanner’s organization and local government. The Russian Jewish Congress petitioned the court about a memorial plaque that city officials had placed last November at the city’s Zmievskaya Balka mass grave that noted “mass killing by the fascists of captured Soviet citizens.” It replaced a plaque from 2004 that did mention the Holocaust.

A ruling on the matter is expected later this year, according to Matvey Chlenov, the RJC’s deputy executive director. Chlenov told JTA that city officials wrote a memo warning that mentioning the Holocaust could lead to “ethnic unrest.”

Southern Russia is home to many immigrants from the Caucasus region. Nationalist Russians staged riots there in 2010.

“We believe the new plaque is a parody more than any case of anti-Semitism or deliberate Holocaust obfuscation,” Chlenov said. “We nonetheless believe the original plaque at Zmievskaya Balka must be restored. It’s a matter of basic recognition of the identity of the victims.”

Statement of Solidarity with the Russian People

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:33:45 -0500

Union of Councils expresses solidarity with democratic forces in Russia who strongly protest against the falsification of parliamentary election results. Today, big rallies in Moscow, Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, and many other cities and towns across Russia showed that Russian civil society not only exists, but is fighting for democratization and political-economic reforms.

We support the demands of human rights organizations to cancel the results of the election and initiate new ones under strong monitoring by local and international organizations and media. We were pleased that the protests have been peaceful and cooperative with police.

UCSJ wishes great success to our Russian human rights friends and partners in developing democratic practice, institutions and traditions. We are ready to help them approach these high goals.

Violence in Lviv

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 18:25:44 -0500

LVIV, UKRAINE - Several young men have beaten up a student from Moroссo in a central city street. The attack happened suddenly. The victim and witness suggest that the attack was motivated by racial hatred. The police refused to accept the statement, because nobody in the nearest police station understood English. Policemen refused the translation of the bystander, because it is forbidden according by protocol to use unofficial translators.

Attacks on Foreigners in Ternopil City

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:30:01 -0500

TERNOPIL, UKRAINE - Between November 15-20 more than eight international students have been attacked and beaten just from from the dormitory for students of Ternopil medical University. Police were notified. The students were from Sudan, Nigeria, Somalia, Cameroon, and Ghana.

UCSJ Condemns Sentence of Ales Belyatsky

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:09:00 -0500

Join us in protest against the unfair and politically motivited sentence of leading Belarussian activist Ales Belyatsky.

Ales Belyatsky, president of NGO Viasna (Spring) is a well-known, honest patriot and champion of democratic reform in Belarus.

The money he received from donors was spent soley to promote human rights and help political prisoners and their families. He is accused in non-paying the taxes from his “profit.”

A Minsk court sentenced him on November 25, 2011 to four-and-half-years in a labor camp.

The Belarussian authorities have activists in a bind: they cannot legally register their organizations or receive financial support from abroad.

This sentence proves that Belarussian authorities continue to dupe the public and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) governments by not releasing all political prisoners.

In additon to Belyatsky, the leading opposition presidetial candidate Andrey Sannnikov is still in a labor camp, along with many others. UCSJ demands that Belyatsky’s sentence be overturned and that Belarus accord with its UN and OSCE obligations.

David Waksberg on Jewish Personhood

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:07:45 -0500

When I was 13 years old, a group of people tried to steal an airplane in a desperate attempt to escape the USSR and call international attention to the plight of Soviet Jews.

They failed in their first objective and succeeded in their 2^nd one. Until the Leningrad trials, the only thing I knew about Jews from Eastern Europe were the faces in the family photos on my grandparents’ apartment wall, all of whom had perished from unnatural causes.

In solidarity with one of the two defendants initially sentenced to death, I got myself this huge magen david on a necklace with the name of Mark Dymshitz and wore it to school every day.

One day an African-American friend of mine asked me why I was wearing this big Jewish star around my neck. I explained to him who Mark Dymshitz was, what the cause was about and also, that I wanted people to know I was Jewish. He pondered this for a moment and then started rubbing the skin on his face and said – “see this? I wear this so people will know I’m black!”

That boy understood something I hadn’t - In fact, that necklace was my skin, my badge, my secular kippah. That the teenage me wore this necklace not only to call attention to Mark Dymshitz and his friends, but also to myself – as a Jew – was neither unique nor trivial. For many American Jews, the great re-awakening of Soviet Jewish consciousness was a wake-up call here. During the 70s and 80s, activism on behalf of Soviet Jews was, for many American Jews, their primary means of Jewish expression. Through this activity, many found their way to their own meaningful Jewish life. Observing thousands of Russian Jews risking all to partake in what we all took for granted – Jewish life – was not only inspiring, it was thought-provoking. Perhaps there was more to being Jewish than we had thought.

The teenage me graduated to other methods beyond wearing a necklace, and, to be honest, wearing the name Dymshitz on my chest every day was problematic for my teenage social life.

As more Soviet Jews ran afoul of the KGB, more names for posters, necklaces, buttons, and bracelets. Here’s one I wore as a teenager – with the name of my co-panelist – Joseph Begun.

All these accoutrements – buttons, posters, bumper stickers, bracelets, not to mention pickets, petitions, etc. – I was never sure what exactly they were accomplishing, but they were my entry in. And for many young Jews they were, along with Israel, a set of symbols and tools by which we defined what sort of modern Jews we wanted to be: proud, assertive, defiant, principled – like our role models across the ocean.

The movement had several points of origin, including Israel and, of course, within the Soviet Union itself. I will let others speak of what went on there. I want to address what this thing was about from the perspective of those individuals involved with the Union of Councils and its associates, what we referred to as “the activists.”

This was not a movement based on ideology or theory or, for the most part, theology. While there were high-minded theoretical treatises and strategic position papers, these were not what drove us. The movement was based on the observation of empirical evidence as it unfolded in Russia, and, more than anything, on outrage. We saw something for which outrage was the only sane response, so outrage was our response. That outrage came from a human place and also from the specter, never distant, of the six million who perished at the hands of totalitarianism, and knowledge and shame of our own impotence to prevent it. For Jacob Birnbaum, Moshe Decter, and others who kick-started this movement here in the mid-sixties, the Holocaust was barely two decades removed. Harold Light, who founded the Bay Area Council for Soviet Jews, and who spoke in a distinctly AMERICAN voice, said it well – “it’s not often you get a 2^nd chance to rescue your people.”

I must confess that I am struck by the relative scarcity of women among the speakers at this conference, given the leadership role that women played in the American movement to free Soviet Jews. I understand that some of them, like Lynn Singer and Irene Manekovsky, are no longer around, and others, like Pam Cohen, were unable to attend. So I’ll simply say that the KGB colonel who told Sharansky that his fate was in the hands of “students and housewives” had it right. I began as a student, as did other leaders like Morey Schapira, and most everything we got right we learned from those housewives.

Those students and housewives didn’t confine themselves to public protest – they engaged in political advocacy at the highest and most sophisticated levels. And I never saw more effective advocacy in Congress, the White House or the State Department than that practiced by these housewives. They had a talent to cut to the core of the issue and to appeal to the basic humanity of those in power. If you don’t believe me, listen to George Schultz speak about his public service. For this smart and seasoned man who stood at the apex of geo-political power and influence, his most memorable and meaningful moment was when he received a phone call from Ida Nudel after she arrived in Israel with the simple words – “I’m home.”

Peoplehood means many things and we as a people are still in the process of defining just what 21^st century peoplehood represents. Certainly, it has something to do with a deep sense of connection we feel toward one another – connection and responsibility – expressed by the phrase – kol yisrael arevim zeh le zeh (all Israel is responsible one to another). I can tell you the meaning of this phrase for me is wrapped in the way that I learned it. I didn’t learn it in Hebrew school or in my Bar Mitzvah training. It was introduced to me by Eliezer Yuzefovich, a Moscow refusenik who uttered those words when I asked him why he, a father of young children, was embarking on a hunger strike.

There is much in the history of this movement worth mining if we indeed want to establish a strong sense of peoplehood. For this endeavor – to free our people – was indeed a global partnership and one that stubbornly defied efforts to control it. It was a deeply human movement – characterized by human faces, stories, emotions.

A strange thought occurred to me as I was preparing these remarks. What drove American Jews to rise up as they did for their brothers and sisters whom they had never met? I think among their motivations – loneliness. I don’t mean that we were personally lonely, individuals devoid of friends and companionship. I mean that we, as a people felt a loss that we could barely articulate – like an amputee feels in missing a limb. It was the loss of the six million to our body politic, to our people and, beyond that the loss borne of the forced isolation of those who survived behind the Iron Curtain. We were lonely as a people and, on some very deep and visceral level, we yearned for reunification of our family, for the embrace of our long-lost loved ones. I know I am not the only American Jew who, during those dark days of the 70s and 80s, felt most alive and fulfilled when sitting at a kitchen table in Moscow or Leningrad or Kiev or Minsk, engaged in hours of conversation with Jews I had never before met but with whom I found instant kinship. And I know I’m not the only American Jew who found himself among a group of Jewish refuseniks in the USSR only to realize in amazement how familiar it felt – how these people were JUST like my uncles, aunts, and cousins.

Peoplehood indeed.

What inspired us were stories of courage, of course, but also stories of discovery or rediscovery – a sort of Master Class in “What Being Jewish Means to Me.” I will share but one – only to illustrate its connection to and illumination of the American Jewish experience and of what Peoplehood can mean for us –

Alexander Paritsky, a refusenik from Kharkov, had been a successful scientist until he applied for a visa for Israel. One thing led to another and Paritsky found himself arrested and sent to a harsh labor camp.

The camp commandant asked him why he threw away a successful Soviet life for this hopeless quest.

Paritsky told the commandant that when he was six years old, kids taunted him with “Zhid.” He’d never heard this word before and indeed, hadn’t been aware that he was Jewish so he ran home to speak with his father.

“Yes, we are Jews,” Paritsky’s dad told him. “Jews are no different than Russians or Ukrainians – we are all the same. Those children who say otherwise are bad.”

Paritsky was intrigued by this. Other nationalities - Ukrainians, Moldovans, Armenians - had their own culture, their own language. Do Jews have their own language?

“Yes,” said his dad – “it’s called Hebrew.”

What do the letters look like? Asked little Sasha.

His father took a piece of paper and a pencil and, with his little boy on his lap put the pencil to paper, to write out the aleph bet.

Sasha sat there watching the pencil poised motionless over the page for what probably felt like eternity. Finally, he saw not writing, but a tear drop fall on the paper.

“Papa,” little Sasha cried out, “why are you crying?”

“Because,” said his father, “I can’t remember how to draw the letters.”

“My father’s tears,” Paritsky told the commandant, “seared a hole in my heart and my soul.”

His journey to Israel, by way of the Gulag, began with that blank sheet of paper.

This story, one of thousands, represented a sort of extreme dystopian fun-house mirror image of our own experience of modernity. What American Jew could not relate to this sad scenario of Jewish illiteracy? And who would not think twice before discarding that same precious gift that Paritsky, through courage, determination and three years in the Gulag, struggled to reclaim?

Paritsky’s father’s words seared a hole not only in Paritsky’s heart, but in mine. These stories, and there were thousands of them, seared a hole in the collective heart of American Jewry.

At the end of the day, we realized that their stories were our stories. Through these stories, through these human connections, commonalities of experience, of heritage, and of destiny were learned and a partnership was forged.

Isn’t that what Peoplehood is about?

(David was director of the Bay Area Council on Soviet Jews. He currently serves as CEO of the Bureau of Jewish Education)

Verdicts in Russian Racial Crime Cases

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:01:00 -0500

Anti-Caucasian rallies continued. The public campaign “Stop feeding the Caucasus” culminated in a Moscow rally on October 22nd that featured anti-corruption and xenophobic slogans. Nevertheless, it failed to mobilize significant support with only 500 attendees. Meanwhile, the well-known blogger and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny was one of the key speakers along with the leader of the pro-democracy People’s Freedom Party, Vladimir Milov. These “liberal” politicians who are regarded as respectable opposition to Putin spoke alongside more odious nationalist leaders of the xenophobic “Movement against Illegal Immigration.”

There were also some important criminal verdicts. Recent migrants from the Caucasus were sentenced to prison for the death of “Spartak” football fan Egor Sviridov. (Spartak fans are known for their nationalistic and xenophobic tendencies.) Sviridov was shot during a brawl with Caucasian fans. His death caused a nationalist demonstration and clashes with police in Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square which resulted in five arrests and sentences of two-to-six-and-a-half years. The killer, Aslan Cherkesov, received 20 years in prison; his “accomplices” five years each.

In a related incident, Chechens involved in the death of a Spartak fan were sentenced to 17 and six years in prison respectively. These sentences were clearly intended to precede the Russian March, a massive nationalist rally that occurs annually on November 4th.
According to the SOVA Center, at least 14 persons in at least seven regions of the country were victims of hate crimes in October. Seven acts of neo-Nazi vandalism were also recorded.

As December 4th parliamentary near, parties continue to toy with the nationalistic electorate. The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) included as a candidate on its list the son of an army colonel blamed for raping and killing a Chechen girl.# That is one of the ways LDPR intends to court the right-wing electorate. The party also invited various activists, including those from extreme-right groups to serve as observers for LDPR during elections. The party list also includes Maxim Korotkov-Gulyaev, the attorney of Evgeny Khasis, who was sentenced for the murder of human rights and anti-fascist lawyer Stanislav Markelov. The party caucus took place under the slogan «For Russians!».

fyeaheasterneurope: Time lapse video of St. Petersburg,...

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:48:39 -0500

fyeaheasterneurope:

Time lapse video of St. Petersburg, Russia.

This is by the same guy who did the time lapse video of Minsk I posted awhile ago and this one is just as awesome.

youthattackmob: Russia celebrates the end of WWII. Moscow....

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:41:14 -0500

youthattackmob:

Russia celebrates the end of WWII.

Moscow. 1945.

Russia satirists use YouTube to challenge Kremlin

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:49:00 -0400

By Stephen Ennis BBC Monitoring

Cult cartoon character Mr Freeman is part of a digital onslaught on the political establishment

Media control has been one of the key factors that have allowed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to dominate Russia’s political landscape since he was first elected president in 2000.

As the country prepares for parliamentary and presidential elections, though, there are signs that the Kremlin is facing a fresh media challenge in the form of an increasingly politicised audience on YouTube.

Over the past few weeks, a number of Russian politics-themed clips on YouTube have achieved over one million views.

The videos are in a variety of genres - political polemic, satire and song - but they have one thing in common: a critical or irreverent attitude to the country’s leadership - Mr Putin, President Dmitry Medvedev and their party, United Russia.

Earlier this year, anti-corruption campaigner and blogger Aleksey Navalnyy launched a web campaign against United Russia under the banner “Party of Crooks and Thieves”.

One of the latest instalments in this campaign is a clip on his YouTube channel entitled: “Let’s remind the crooks and thieves of their 2002 manifesto”. The video lists what it says are United Russia’s failures and broken pledges, and concludes: “They have not just lied, they have brought the country to such a state that these and other promises seem to be mockeries”. It also urges viewers to vote for any party but United Russia in December’s parliamentary election.

The video was posted on YouTube on 7 October. By 28 October, it been viewed more than a million times.

Satire

YouTube is not only giving a powerful voice to the opposition, it is also helping to revive subversive art forms.

TV political satire has been virtually extinct in Russia since the puppet show Kukly (along the lines of the now-defunct UK satirical programme Spitting Image) disappeared from the screens shortly after Mr Putin came to power.

Now, though, this kind of satire is making a comeback on the internet. Not all the satire is anti-government, but it is generally irreverent towards authority.

Kamikadze_d is a popular online satirist

One of its brightest exponents on YouTube is Dmitry Ivanov, who uses the online nickname Kamikadze_d.

Ivanov’s fast-talking stand-up routines on the Russian political scene have been growing in popularity for several months now.

The first of them to break the one-million-view mark was a lampoon of a TV debate between leading politicians that was posted on 9 September.

Ivanov quickly repeated the feat with a routine called “Putin’s terrible secret”, in which he suggests that hidden clones of the prime minister are taking over Russia.

For those who like their satire a bit darker, there is Mr Freeman, a spooky black-and-white cartoon character whose nightmarish visions of the modern world have won him a cult following among Russian internet users.

On 11 October Mr Freeman abandoned satire and posted an “open letter” to President Medvedev, urging him to stop Mr Putin from becoming president again. By the end of the month it, too, had got over a million views.

The clip says Mr Putin’s first stint as president “plunged Russia into a medieval gloom” and that the only way to prevent a repeat of this is for Mr Medvedev to sack him from the post of prime minister.

Protest music

YouTube has also helped revive Russian protest music, which, like satire, has been virtually banned from popular mainstream media outlets.

In 2010, hip-hop artist Ivan Alekseyev, aka Noize MC, got over a million views with a song about his imprisonment for singing anti-police lyrics at a concert in Volgograd.

Another protest song that has gone viral is “Our madhouse is voting for Putin” by the Yekaterinburg-based band Rabfak, which has already reached an aggregate audience of over one million since being posted on YouTube on 11 October.

The song describes how Russia is awash with corruption and abuses, but says that people will still support Mr Putin. And it warns that those who question this will be given “an injection in the backside”.

The jaunty refrain runs:

“Our madhouse is voting for Putin; Putin is just the candidate for us”

Politicisation

Mr Putin has been the target of numerous satirical videos recently

According to the latest research by polling organisation the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), some 60 million Russians now have access to the internet out of a total population of just over 140 million.

Until recently, though, political content on the internet has not tended to attract a mass audience.

In 2010, there were some signs that this was changing - most notably, the growing popularity of protest songs.

The appearance of a spate of overtly political videos with one-million-plus audiences in just a few weeks is unprecedented. The Russian website Gazeta.ru lists its 10 favourites. Only six Russian clips got over one million views in the whole of 2010. And it is a further sign that the internet audience in Russia is becoming increasingly politicised.

Moreover, the prevailing political mood is distinctly anti-government.

Since Mr Medvedev became president in 2008, the authorities have made great efforts to influence the internet community. The president himself launched a videoblog and then a Twitter account, which currently has over 625,000 followers.

But on Twitter, as on YouTube, the political traffic appears to be mainly one-way. In October, a pro-government activist tried to celebrate Mr Putin’s birthday with the hashtag “SpasiboPutinuZaEto” (ThanksPutinForThat). But his plan backfired, as the hashtag became a magnet for jokes at the prime minister’s expense.

Changing perceptions

Anti-government or satirical clips on YouTube are unlikely to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the forthcoming elections.

But they may already be changing perceptions.

Recent research by academics from Moscow State University found that Mr Putin is regarded in a much more negative light today than before the previous presidential elections he fought in 2000 and 2004.

The researchers found that just 17.1% of respondents had a positive view of his professional capacities as against 69% in 2000 and 64 per cent in 2004. According to the website Gazeta.ru, among the negative sides of Mr Putin’s rule listed by respondents were “unfulfilled promises”, “failure to solve corruption problems”, “excessive populism” and “excessive authoritarianism”.

Watching political content on YouTube is likely to reinforce these perceptions.

allthingseurope: Lviv, Ukraine (by Qba from Poland)

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:46:24 -0400

allthingseurope:

Lviv, Ukraine

(by Qba from Poland)

Russia: Prohibition of Religious Groups

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:13:10 -0400

Alexandria, VA - November 1, 2011 - On 6 October 2011, the Russian Ministry of Justice published a draft of amendments to the 1997 Federal Law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations” (“Religion Law).

Public comment regarding these proposed amendments was closed on 10 October 2011. To date, they have not been introduced in the Duma.

THE INSTITUTE on Religion and Public Policy has obtained an English translation of the proposed Ministry of Justice amendments for this analysis.

Review of the draft law by the INSTITUTE’S Expert Committee on Legislation and Implementation leads to the conclusion that passage of this legislation would represent a further serious setback for religious freedom in Russia.

The Religion Law contravenes European Human Rights Convention, OSCE and United Nations standards that Russia is bound to follow, as it flagrantly discriminates against minority religious groups.

In the INSTITUTE’S opinion, the draft Religion Law is completely inconsistent with fundamental human rights as it contravenes the principles of equality and non-discrimination.

The INSTITUTE urges Russia to request the assistance of the OSCE Panel of Religious Experts to review the draft amendments to the 1997 Religion Law so that the panel may advise the government regarding the compatibility of the provisions of the proposed legislation with OSCE standards and international human rights law.

The full expert analysis of the law can be viewed here.

Belarus human rights activist Ales Belyatski on trial

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:08:05 -0400

Belarus human rights activist Ales Belyatski on trial:

fyeaheasterneurope:

One of Belarus’ most prominent human rights activists has gone on trial in Minsk.

Ales Belyatski runs an organisation called Vyasna (Spring) which monitors the government’s activities against opposition figures.

He was arrested in August and charged with tax evasion after the authorities discovered that he held bank accounts in Poland and Lithuania.

Human rights groups say the trial is an attempt to silence him.

Mr Belyatski maintains that the accounts were necessary to fund Vyasna’s work as the Belarus government prevented him from holding money inside the country.

Vyasna has closely tracked Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s ongoing clampdown against the country’s opposition.

Mr Belyatski’s arrest caused controversy when it was discovered that Poland and Lithuania had supplied Belarusian officials with his bank details.

Polish officials later apologised for aiding Mr Lukashenko in his campaign against the Belarusian opposition.

U.S. Must Redouble Human Rights Efforts in Russia

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:13:39 -0400

U.S. assistant secretary of state for the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor in the Moscow region said the United States needs to “redouble” its efforts to press Russia on protecting human rights.

Full article: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/why-some-russians-need-the-wests-help/445999.html

fyeaheasterneurope: Kiev, Ukraine.

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:28:17 -0400

fyeaheasterneurope:

Kiev, Ukraine.

fyeaheasterneurope: Time-lapse video of Minsk, Belarus.

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 22:22:15 -0400

fyeaheasterneurope:

Time-lapse video of Minsk, Belarus.

More Racist Football Violence

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 22:06:02 -0400

Doesn’t look like things are going to be getting much better at football games. The Moscow Times reports that 3 Uzbeks have been taken into custody for beating an ethnic Russia to death. Unfortunately,

“The Investigative Committee and the city government have denied that the flight resulted from ethnic tension.”

No one seems to be buying it, and politicians are likely to stoke the flames in upcoming elections. Annual nationalist rallies next week won’t help.

Russia battles racism in football

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 18:21:18 -0400

Russia battles racism in football