Evidence has emerged over the last two weeks of a coordinated, Soviet style campaign against Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. Charges of extremism have been filed against two congregations, FSB and other officials have interfered with over 30 Jehovah's Witnesses congresses this summer, and a series of articles demonizing Jehovah's Witnesses have appeared in provinical newspapers throughout the country, in some cases on the same day. Many of these articles focus on an alleged kidnapping by Jehovah's Witnesses of a young man supposedly seeking sanctuary inside a Russian Orthodox church in Elista.

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On the one hand, Moscow's mayor Yuri Luzhkov publicly condemns xenophobia and last week called for harsher laws against hate speech and hate crimes, saying on April 15 that: "The government must ensure the tranquility of all people regardless of the color of their skin... Xenophobia is a disease that may eventually endanger this country. The main reason for such crimes is the absence of a real punishment." At the same time, his subordinates running the city's law enforcement agencies impudently contradict him and President Putin by denying that racist violence is a problem.

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A few days after the city's chief prosecutor harshly criticized human rights activists for supposedly exaggerating the problem of hate crimes in Russia, Moscow's chief of police Vladimir Pronin denied that there is an organized neo-Nazi movement in Moscow, according to an April 10, 2008 report by the Russian Jewish web site Jewish.ru. Speaking on TVTs television on Tuesday, Mr. Pronin said that, "There is no organized skinhead movement in Moscow, there are just individual excesses." He added that in the first two months of the year, Moscow police registered around 60 crimes motivated by extremism, and that prosecutors opened three hate crimes investigations. As usual, he tempered these numbers by emphasizing that foreign citizens are more likely to commit crimes than Russian citizens, according to police statistics.

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Instead of properly investigating neo-Nazi attacks on anti-fascists, some Russian law enforcement agencies prefer to target anti-fascist activists. Perhaps it's because anti-fascists tend to have little respect for the political establishment and generally espouse left-wing ideas. In addition, at least some within the Kremlin apparently lean towards pseudo-fascist ideology, according to a recent article on one of the Kremlin's chief ideologues.

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Two stories from this week illustrate problems that Jewish students face in Russia. One the one hand, central and locals authorities are increasingly pushing Russian Orthodox theology in the public schools, though, as usual in Russia, the extent to which this is happening varies from region to region. In addition, a study published last week argued that many Russian textbooks are antisemitic, ignoring or minimizing the history of the Holocaust, during which millions of Soviet Jews died.

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The money quote of this JTA story: "Nobody wants to be responsible for giving away state money to Jews before elections."

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Some Russian judges just don't seem to get it, handing down ridiculous slaps on the wrist for murders, hate crimes, and assaults.

You can find the article here.

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