Genocide Watch

Russia searches hundreds of rights groups, NGOs
By Max Seddon, AP
21 March 2013

MOSCOW — Russian prosecutors on Thursday searched the offices of Memorial, one of the country's oldest and most respected human rights groups, as part of a new, wide-ranging campaign targeting hundreds of nongovernmental organizations.

Up to 2,000 organizations have already been searched, Pavel Chikov, a member of the presidential human rights council, told The Associated Press, saying the scale of the government campaign was unprecedented.

"It goes full circle across the whole spectrum," Chikov said. "They're trying to find as many violations as possible." (read more)

Local Russian Hijab Ban Puts Muslims in a Squeeze
By Ellen Barry, The New York Times
18 March 2013

LEVOPADINSKY, Russia — The girls of the Salikhov family live in frontier country. Their road is dirt, punctuated by puddles and sheep, and their house does not have plumbing or running water. They had been hoping this would be the year the local authorities got around to hooking up natural gas.

Instead, they found themselves at the center of an emerging debate over religion in Russia.

When local school officials in the sparsely populated far east of the Stavropol region announced that girls in hijabs, the Islamic head covering, would no longer be allowed in government schools, the Salikhovs had to make changes. (read more)

The Cossacks Are Back. May the Hills Tremble.
By Ellen Barry, New York Times
Published: March 16, 2013

STAVROPOL, Russia — Outside this city’s police headquarters on a recent night, a priest in a purple velvet hat and gold stole moved from one man to the next, offering a cross to be kissed and drenching their faces with holy water from a long brush.

And so began another night of law enforcement as Cossacks, the fierce horsemen who once secured the frontier for the Russian empire, marched out to join the police patrolling the city.

In his third term, President Vladimir V. Putin has offered one clear new direction for the country: the development of a conservative, nationalist ideology. Cossacks have emerged as a kind of mascot, with growing financial and political support. (Read More)

How Stalin Created Some of the Post-Soviet World's Worst Ethnic Conflicts
By Robert Coalson in The Atlantic
1st March 2013

Eighty-one-year-old Nikolai Khasig was born in Sukhumi in 1932. It was just one year after Soviet dictator Josef Stalin stripped Abkhazia of its short-lived status as a full-fledged republic of the USSR and made it a region of Soviet Georgia.

At the end of 1936, Lavrenty Beria -- at that time the head of the Transcaucasia region and later the sadistic head of Stalin's secret police -- invited the popular Abkhaz leader Nestor Lakoba to dinner at his house in Tbilisi. Lakoba died suddenly -- officially, of a heart attack, but it was widely believed that the former revolutionary comrade of Stalin's had been poisoned.(Read More)

Russia expands treason law, critics fear crackdown
The Associated Press
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
14 November 2012

MOSCOW —Adding to fears that the Kremlin aims to stifle dissent, Russians now live under a new law expanding the definition of treason so broadly that critics say it could be used to call anyone who bucks the government a traitor.

The law took effect Wednesday, just two days after President Vladimir Putin told his human rights advisory council that he was ready to review it.

His spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies Wednesday that Putin would be willing to review the treason law if its implementation reveals "some problems or aspects restricting rights and freedoms." (read more)

Russian Christians Fear Persecution on Rise as Moscow Church Building Demolished
Dave Bohon
The New American
12, September 2012

A demolition crew used the cover of night — and police protection — to demolish a Pentecostal church in Moscow September 6, according to a European news source. Vasili Romanyuk, pastor of the Holy Trinity Pentecostal Church in eastern Moscow, told the Oslo-based Forum 18 News Service that an unidentified crew, backed by local police, arrived at the church around midnight, and by morning had disassembled most of the three-story structure. The congregation had apparently been attempting to work with government authorities to secure the legal authority to keep its building at the location, but had been beaten by a court order.

“In human terms, this is barbarism,” Mikhail Odintsov, a Russian human rights spokesman, said. “This is the Soviet approach, to come in the middle of the night with mechanical diggers. This is unacceptable.”

The evangelical congregation was established in 1979 by Serafim Marin, a pastor who had spent nearly 20 years in Soviet labor camps for his Christian faith. The church “gained registration with the Soviet authorities as an autonomous Pentecostal community in the late 1970s,” reported Forum 18. “However, the city authorities forced it out of its first building in 1995. The replacement 'temporary' church — bulldozed [September 6] — was built on the current site in 1995-6.”

A spokesman for the Moscow city government defended the demolition, insisting that “everything was done at the decision of the court.” (read more)

Country at Risk:  The Russian Federation

                The breakup of the USSR in 1991 left the Russian Federation with ethnic conflicts in many of its Oblasts (provinces.) Many provinces in the North Caucasus area were historically autonomous republics that are now provinces in a federation in which they are ethnic minorities, with governors nominated by Moscow.

Peoples of the Caucasus region face xenophobia within the Russian Federation.  The Russian government has acknowledged a growing number of Neo-Nazi youth gangs that violently target dark skinned citizens and religious minorities, mainly Muslims, such as Chechens, Ingush, Bashkirs, and Turkic peoples.  A growing “Russia for Russians” nationalist movement is challenging Prime Minister Putin’s United Russia party, driven by forces that would exclude non-Christian, non-Russian peoples.

Prime Minister Putin recently attributed growing ethnic polarization in Russia to the historical development of the Russian Empire. Putin argues that the “ethnicity problem” is a result of imperial Russia being neither a “mono-ethnic state nor a U.S style melting-pot where almost everyone was at one point an immigrant.” (Putin)

People from the North Caucasus and ethnic Africans face serious danger in the larger cities of Russia.  38 Africans were murdered and 377 brutally injured by gangs in 2010.  Along with growing racism in the country, the Russian Federation also has had increasing religious intolerance against Muslims and gender discrimination in Muslim provinces. This problem was most violently expressed during the independence wars in Chechnya.

Under the Leadership of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechen rebel turned Russian loyalist, freedom of religion is virtually impossible. Kadyrov has noted that his “republic would be better off if it were ruled by Sharia law”. Against Russian law, Kadyrov has started campaigns to punish those in Chechnya who do not abide by Sharia law.  Kadyrov has also been known to openly endorse honor killings and polygamy.
In Chechnya, women have been targeted and attacked for not adhering to Muslim traditional dress. Law enforcement has started shooting women with paintball guns who choose to walk in public without a headscarf or with short sleeves. 

                While Russia continues to violate the civil rights of its own citizens, Russia continues to fund the military regime in Syria. Syria is Russia’s last stronghold in the Arab world. Their naval base in Tartus is the operating base for Russia’s $1.5 billion arms trade in Syria (Trenin).  Russia has vetoed any UN Security Council Resolution to halt the killing in Syria.

                One of the most important risk factors for genocide is the presence of an exclusionary ideology.  Another is past genocide perpetrated with impunity against the victim groups, by Stalin under the USSR.  A third is an authoritarian political system.  Although progress has been made toward democracy, Russia is still effectively a one-party, authoritarian police state. The growth of populist movements with exclusionary ideologies against non-Russian, Muslim minorities is a sign of growing Polarization.