Window on Eurasia

Extremist Russian Website Calls for Reprisals Against Rights Activists

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 1, 2006 – An extremist Russian website has called for
physical reprisals against a list human rights activists -- and even
provided those who might carry such attacks out with photographs and
other details about those it would like to see attacked, according to a
group of Chechen rights activists living outside of Russia.

The most prominent among these proposed targets, the activists say, is
Ekho Moskvy journalist Yevgeniya Al’bats, but the list, which was
earlier posted on russianwill.org/materials/vragi.html -- a site that
may now have been shut down – also includes five others
[http://babar.ru/index.php?pt==news&event=v1&IDE=32291].

They are Svetlana Gannushkina, head of the Migration and Law network;
Boris Stomakhin, a defender of Chechen militants; Pavel Shaykin of
Democratic Russia; Lyudmila Yevstifeyeva, a member of the Russian
Movement for the Independence of Chechnya; and Yevgeniiy Frumkin, head
of the anti-fascist website, antifa.ru.

This is an ominous development, the seven authors of the appeal
suggest. In the past, Russian nationalist sites have made general threats
against human rights activists and those who have spoken out on behalf of the
Chechens against the policies of the Russian government, but this is
more serious.

On the one hand, the site contains precisely the kind of information
those who would attack might need, and on the other, its presentation
clearly threatens violence. With regard to one activist now in
detention – Stomakhin – the site provides the home address and telephone
number of his mother.

And it ominously asks: “Who said that parents are not responsible for
the actions of their children?” Moreover, the appeal continues that
in the current climate, “one must assume that this is far from a
complete list of those against whom Russian fascists would like to inflict
reprisals.

The seven activists who signed this appeal now live in Lithuania, the
Netherlands, France, Great Britain and the United States, but judging
by their names, most originated in what is now the Russian Federation or
at least in one or another portion of what was the Soviet Union.

They argue that this ratcheting up of pressure against rights activists
and defenders of Chechens represents the latest instance of the
spillover of the kind of illegal violence routinely used by federal
forces in the northern Caucasus, a spillover that they argue is
generating fascism in Russia itself.

Indeed, the appeal argues, “the fascism that is appearing in Russia
is the result of the war in Chechnya, a conflict which the West, having
underestimated the Russian threats, either could not or did not want to
stop.” Now, the West will suffer as a result of its earlier inaction.

And the appeal continues, “having converted what was an autonomous
republic into a zone of illegality, those followers of Stalin who have
come to power under the pretext of a world-wide war with terrorism,
have slandered the Chechen people, killed its best part, and ravaged the
remainder”

That development was tragic enough, the appeal continues, but now
“the bloody experience of illegality [of federal forces in Chechnya] has
spread throughout Russia, neighboring states and throughout the world
as a result of the efforts of criminal communities under the protection of
the Kremlin.

Moreover, the appeal argies, these developments, which reflect the
views of people at the very top of the Russian political pyramid demonstrate
that the crimes of fascist groups like the skinheads and those this
website hopes to provoke are clearly commited “with the knowledge and
direction of the Kremlin.”

Given the severity of the threat, the seven activists say, it is time
for people both in Russia and around the world to stand up and be
counted. People everywhere must “begin demonstrations of protest
against the political repressions in Russia…and demand at a minimum
the observance of legality and glasnost” toward the victims.

And, the appeal continues, “those leaders of the countries of Europe
and the U.S. who run after the friendship and cooperation with the
criminal Kremlin regime must be subjected to severe criticism, and
citizens of these countries must demand the retirement of their
politicians.”

The appeal, which is written in despairing language and which to date
has attracted relatively little attention, ends on a plaintive but
perhaps ultimately optimistic note: “We were not able to stop the war
in Chechnya,” it says, but “perhaps we will be able to stop the
growth of fascism in Russia itself.”

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