The Scotsman

Fri 2 May 2003

Now for a human rights revolution

Boris Pustyntsev

I KNOW what it is to face police discrimination and harassment. I spent five years unfairly imprisoned in jails and concentration camps because of my political beliefs.

The KGB arrested me in 1957 for giving out leaflets supporting Hungarian freedom fighters and demanding the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops. After my release, I faced constant harassment by the secret police.

Russia has changed a great deal since then. There are no longer thousands of prisoners of conscience languishing in gulags and psychiatric institutions. Yet human rights violations are still widespread, and the victims have little chance of seeing the perpetrators brought to justice.

One major problem is widespread racism. The most obvious form of this is a growing wave of racist attacks by skinhead and other gangs.

According to the Russian interior ministry, there are now around 20,000 "skinheads" in Russia and 2500 in Moscow. Xenophobic attacks occur regularly in Moscow and other large Russian cities.

The victims include immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers from Africa, Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus, including ethnic Chechens. Members of the Jewish community are also often harassed and assaulted, and synagogues and Jewish community centres are often targeted.

This obvious violence is not the only problem for victimised groups though, they also face harassment and negligence from police and other officials.

The Russian authorities insist that there is no problem of racism in the country and allow criminals to escape with little or no punishment.

Ten years on from the murder of Stephen Lawrence, I know that institutional racism is a big issue here in the UK. In Russia it is a huge problem, but we haven’t gone through the painful process of confronting it yet.

Until the authorities address racist attitudes within law enforcement agencies, they will continue to be part of the problem, rather than the solution.

The authorities claim that the countless verbal and physical racist assaults are something that the younger generation will grow out of and they are charged with mere "acts of hooliganism", allowing them to escape with minor fines or suspended sentences.

For example, Massa Mayoni, a 35-year old Angolan, died in 2001 after being attacked by skinheads. The charges against his attackers were changed from "serious intentional wounding, leading to accidental death" to "hooliganism" and a young man who had been remanded in custody was released on bail.

VICTIMS of racist attacks often complain that police are reluctant to register attacks as racist and often advise the victims to report the attack as "hooliganism".

One July evening in 2002, a group of about ten Russian men with shaven heads shouting racist abuse brutally attacked African students, refugees and asylum seekers who were picnicking in a Moscow park.

Witnesses said police nearby initially refused to come to their help. When finally police arrived half an hour later, all but two of the alleged attackers had left. Newspaper reports alleged that one of the officers accused the picnickers of starting the fight and ignored evidence forwarded by eyewitnesses.

Various citizens’ groups have repeatedly tried to alert society to the growing dangers posed by Russian fascists.

We have warned them that neo-Nazi organisations spread their slogans and propaganda daily without hindrance. (There are more than 300 regular publications openly disseminated by the extreme right.)

We have demanded that instigators of racial hatred are charged in accordance with Articles of the Penal Code and suggested that when trying to combat racism, the government introduces educational programmes to block the spread of hate ideology.

Occasionally, the federal administration loudly announces new campaigns aimed at curbing fascists, but no supportive practical steps usually follow.

In general, politicians have actually made things worse. They push a frightening nationalism which contrasts "us," Russians, with "them," all the others.

This is a dangerous path to take. Under Yeltsin’s government everybody knew that if a civil servant of any rank made a racist remark in public, he would be out immediately. That was a deterrent for the chauvinistic, xenophobic sentiments always present in Russian society. Today this deterrent has gone.

Populist slogans sound in every region, and sometimes receive substantial support at the ballot box. In today’s Russia it is not unusual for the highest- ranking officials to be trailing along behind the opinions of the rabble.

This eagerness of the Russian administration to ride a populist wave has led to a visible outburst of political extremism and contributed to sky-rocketing violence against foreigners and others that "don’t belong".

It makes the racists believe that the government is, deep down, on their side, despite all its claims to the contrary.

DOES all this mean that we in Russia are fighting for the lost cause? No. Russia has changed a lot in the last decade. One of the results is a gradual strengthening of civil society.

It’s a daily battle, and we often fail, but we can also claim some substantial achievements, in reforming judiciary and law-enforcement bodies.

Unfortunately, recent global developments are working against us. One of the consequences of the September 11 tragedy was slackening of Western pressure on the Russian government. We place our hopes with organisations like Amnesty International whose current Justice for All in Russia campaign will help much to revive this pressure and make the Russian government more sensitive to it.

Boris Pustyntsev is chairman of the human rights group Citizens Watch, which campaigns for reform of the Russian army, police and judiciary 

As part of a UK tour for Amnesty International, he will be speaking at the Augustine Church Centre, George IV Bridge, tomorrow at 6.30pm For more information, contact Rosemary Burnett on 0131-466 6200.

©2003 scotsman.com