RIGHTS-RUSSIA: Media Feeding New Xenophobia

By Kester Kenn Klomegah Reprint | | Print |

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Mar 1 2005 (IPS) - ‘Gypsy mafia stripped Muscovites of apartments’ says a headline in a leading Russian newspaper. ‘Ukrainian woman came to Moscow to sell child’ says another.

The headlines say more about a new tone in Russian media than about a gypsy mafia or the Ukrainian woman.

Vera Malkova at the Russian Academy of Sciences has been monitoring coverage of ethnic issues in the three largest circulated Russian newspapers Izvestia, Nezavismaya and Kosomolskaya Pravda for the last four years in a programme funded by the European Union.

Malkova sees a growing political extremism, racial intolerance and xenophobia fuelled by the media. "Most Russians would say that such problems don’t exist and are caused by non-ethnic Russians," Malkova told IPS. "But these problems are very real. And they demand frequent discussions between society and the government."

The situation, she said, "is further worsened by a huge decline in the entire system of moral values, where open calls for national feuds, hatred and intolerance have unfortunately become something of a national pastime for some Russians."

Militant skinheads and other extremist groups now publicly express such sentiments, and national media publications are supporting them, she said. The sentiments, she said, are feeding on a difficult economic situation and growing unemployment.

President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged what researchers see. "Any display of xenophobia and religious intolerance should be immediately responded to, not only by state agencies, but also by society," he said in a recent address to the All-Russian and Azerbaijan Annual Congress. Xenophobia, he said, has become "a serious and painful problem."

Putin called for "harshly thwarting all displays of nationalism and extremism, which are the breeding grounds for terrorists and their associates."

"Something is wrong here," he said. "Mistakes and faults plague our work. State policy must aim to put an end to any outrages of this kind consistently and resolutely."

The Duma, the national parliament, had to pass a resolution Friday over a letter by some deputies asking to outlaw all Jewish organisations in Russia. The Duma passed the resolution by a 306-58 vote, saying that the "clear anti-Semitic intent" of the letter deserved "sharp condemnation".

"We are outraged by rapid growth of racial intolerance and xenophobia, especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg," president of the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights Yury Dzhibladze told IPS. "We can evidently attribute some of the blame to law enforcement agencies which are not fighting ethnic extremism effectively."

Suspects are normally released from police custody after no more than a warning notice. The police often choose to ignore the extremist motives driving these groups. Offenders are usually charged with "hooliganism".

"Despite public rhetoric about democratic rights, Russia still represents a very fruitful breeding ground for all kinds of manifestations of xenophobia," Dzhibladze said. "The situation is becoming more problematic because Russian politicians deliberately kindle such low feelings, thus increasing the temperature of negative public opinion to a highly dangerous degree."

Human rights organisations point to the nationalist Russian National Unity (RNE) led by Alexander Barkashov as one of the groups advocating an authoritarian government run by ethnic Russians. The group’s logo is a thinly disguised swastika, and group members greet one another with Nazi-style salutes.

There are roughly 20,000 skinheads across Russia, says the head of the Holocaust Fund, Alla Gerber. "In Moscow alone, there are no less than 5,000 openly active young men shaved bald who share a separate nationalist ideology," Gerber told IPS.

A recent survey, she said, had shown that 28 percent of adult Russians want to bring back special settlements for Jews, and 48 percent want to limit the rights of minorities.

"Society is sick with xenophobia," Gerber said. "Like a cancer, it is spreading throughout the country."

Vladimir Lukin, the newly appointed commissioner for human rights issues has promised action.

"My commission plans to monitor the situation, as there are certain reports – though largely unconfirmed at the moment by the commission – that certain law-enforcement officials in certain parts of the country either condone these practices or simply pretend that they don’t exist," he said at a recent press conference.

"In this context," he said, "I plan to set up a special organ within the framework of the commission to monitor xenophobic trends, and urgently respond to cases of social intolerance."

Lukin said school curriculum needs to be redrawn to include lessons in civil rights. "We need to introduce programmes on civil rights in our educational system at the formative stage, say at the seventh or eight grade, when school children are becoming more and more aware of the society," he said.

"The absence of civil rights education is an abnormality – a carryover from the Soviet era, when for obvious reasons, such curricula were not tolerated in the educational system and in society," he added.