MINELRES: MBHR: Digest on Xenophobia and Ethnic Extremism in Russia, 20 June 2005

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Original sender: Moscow bureau for human rights <humanrights@list.ru>


Moscow Bureau for Human Rights
115455 Moscow, Russia, p/o box 6
tel\fax 7 (095)959-27-45, (095)506-02-24
E-mail: mucsj@rambler.ru
http://antirasizm.ru

Director of Moscow Bureau for Human Rights 
Alexander Brod

In case of reprinting reference to Moscow Bureau for Human Rights is obligatory.


DIGEST ON XENOPHOBIA AND ETHNIC EXTREMISM IN RUSSIA

The director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights Alexander Brod took part in 
OSCE Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism and Other Forms of Intolerance 
(Cordoba, June 8-9, 2005) and the preparatory conference for NGO�s in Seville. 
A. Brod was a moderator of a section "General Forms of Intolerance, Racism and 
Xenophobia. Sources of Discrimination. Changes of legislation. Education and 
Mass Media" and presented a report on the session "Response to anti-Semitic and 
other hate crimes: the role of the governments, legislation, law enforcement 
services and civil society".

Presentation of the book by a well-known scientist V. Shnirelman "The Faces of 
Hate. Anti-Semitists' and Racialists' marching", published by the Academia 
publishing house with the support of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, took 
place on June, 15 in Independent Press Center. 
Many human rights defenders and scientists made their notes about the situation 
in contemporary Russia on the occasion of this presentation.
The director of the MBHR, Alexander Brod, pointed at the absence of a proper 
reaction on racialism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism from the side of the law 
enforcement services. The last example is the refuse of Basmannaya regional 
prosecutor�s office to institute legal proceedings under the art. 282 of CC RF 
against the authors of the "letter of 5000", demanding to forbid all Jewish 
organizations in RF. Sympathy for chauvinists is becoming something common. 
Prosecution and judges often lack special knowledge on animosity ideology 
questions. That�s why the book of V. Shnirelman would be a real help for them, 
if they only would like to read it, said A. Brod.  
V. Shnirelman himself noted that there exists nowadays an exigency to publish 
special literature with critical evaluation of concepts of Russian and foreign 
racists, "Aryan myth" and so on. 
A corresponding member of Russian Academy of Science (RAC), chair of the 
Caucasus nations department of the RAC Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology 
Sergey Arutyunov stated that pseudo-scientific conceptions in a sphere of 
history and ethnography became widespread during the last years even among 
educated and democratic people, and there�s a lack of literature unmasking 
those theories. He notes that the book of V. Shnirelman is not quite full as it 
ignores such themes as anti-Semitism from negritude positions (a concept of 
Africans� superiority) and anti-Semitism as an integral part of Chechen 
nationalism. Political scientist Vladimir Ilushenko expressed a hope that the 
author will continue his work by describing of the activity of modern 
ideologist of Russian anti-Semitism � I. Shafarevitch, M. Nazarov, O. Platonov, 
Yu. Mukhin, A. Sevastyanov, B. Mironov.


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