The Coalition Against Hate received recognition as UCSJ leaders briefed the congressional joint Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission) both on the coalition, the current status of hate crimes in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and the importance of the impunity of hate crimes to assessing rule of law and to the conduct of foreign policy.

UN racism rapporteur Doudou Diene, another witness, concluded, "There is an unmistakable resurgence in racist violence conducted, primarily, but not exclusively, by neo-Nazi groups."

Click "read more" for more text...

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Nickolai Butkevich and I will be briefing the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe on Tuesday, November 6, 2007. We are honored to be sitting on the same panel as Dr. Dou Dou Diene, the U.N.'s Rapporteur on Racism, and Dr. Tiffany Lightbourn from the Department of Homeland Security.

We have prepared an extensive Briefing Paper for presentation during the briefing. The Paper entitled "Hate Crimes, Rule of Law and Foreign Policy Concerning the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus"  (http://www.fsumonitor.com/stories/UCSJHateCrimesBriefingPaper.pdf) is one we are proud to present to the Commission and to the public as it brings to light the impunity that perpatrators of hate crimes receive in the former Soviet Union.

Read more for more on this story...

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Moscow NGOs Respond with Coalition Against Hate

In a conference of 75-to-80 human rights NGOs and their leaders in Moscow to discuss the negative rule of law implications of religious discrimination and "Hate Speech, Xenophobia and Antisemitism in Russia, Century 21," the discussion became further animated because, coincidentally, it came a day after Vladimir Putin's rant against America at the Munich international security conference.

The meeting was called in part to continue NGO planning to organize the first-ever bi-lingual, interactive human rights blog for Russia (and, soon, Ukraine and Belarus): Coalitionagainsthate.org, and an international NGO human rights monitoring coalition of the same name (Coalition Against Hate).

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Wednesday, December 20, 2006. Page 3...

"Foreign intelligence services are increasingly using international nongovernmental organizations and foreign press bureaus in Russia as cover for their agents," Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev said Tuesday, according to staff writer Simon Saradzhyan, of the Moscow Times,
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/12/20/011.html

As UCSJ sees it, given the government's hostility and paranoia about foreign human rights NGOs, Patrushev's accusation that a Danish NGO is collecting "biased information" concerning events in the North Caucasus, is a broad instance of chilling intimidation, calling into question an NGO's independence to report on incidents as they see them.

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[This "Welcome," which appeared earlier in English, was translated by Leonid Stonov (UCSJ).]

Этот блог, представленный в формате английского и русского языка, предназначен для помещения на него фактов, основанных на мониторинге, аналитических материалов, комментариев и мнений. Также будут помещены отклики и отзывы общественности, озабоченной коррупцией и дисфункцией системы соблюдения прав человека в России, Украине, Беларуси и в других странах бывшего Советского Союза.

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[This is a translation by Leonid Stonov of my earlier post "The Un-indicted “Elephant” in the Iraq Report".]

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In Wednesday's exceptional Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq, http://www.usip.org/isg/iraq_study_group_report/report/1206/index.html, like lesser government policy studies, Russia is the un-indicted "elephant." Although the report does not discuss them, there are two matters -- both related to Russia -- that are, in my judgment, indispensable ingredients for success in Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and elsewhere where terrorists reign.

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The Washington Post reports that yesterday Russia forced 90 foreign grassroots human rights and other nongovernmental organizations to cease all activity until they meet cumbersome corporate registration requirements.

Is this but the first shoe to drop?

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In a call-in tv show on Wednesday, October 25, Russian president Vladimir Putin confirmed he would honor the Constitution and not seek re-election, according to the Moscow Times. Saying he would nonetheless "retain influence," he highlighted corruption as Russia's chief domestic problem, and agreed that improving the justice system was required to properly address mounting hate crimes.

Here are some reasons why we think there must be radical reform, reasons we will not miss Putin:

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"Russia is going through rapid growth of aggressive Russian nationalism." So reports Alexander Verkhovsky and Galina Kozhevnikova of the Moscow-based SOVA Center for Information and Analyis in its October 12 report on Hate Crimes in Russia. SOVA is a member of Coalition Against Hate, administered by UCSJ.

And this spells "trouble for the multi-ethnic federation," said Nickolai Butkevich...

Technorati Tags: antisemitism xenophobia Russia neo-Nazi racism