WCAR: Position of the Russian NGOs
Friday 25 May the Russian NGO delegation organized a briefing to give information on the situation in Russia concerning racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerence. Also they wanted to clearify the ammendments they are proposing for the draft declaration and programme of action of the WCAR.
First Yuri Dzhibladze from the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights, Moscow, gave a general introduction, explaining why the briefing was held and what the hopes of the Russian participants are with regard to the WCAR.
Next he spoke about the importance of not only looking at racism related to slave-trade practices. Different parts of the world have different forms of racism and it is very important to pay attention to all those different forms.
Svetlana Gannushkina from Memorial explained that even though we refer to Russia and other countries in our region as to the countries in transition to democratic forms of governance unfortunately we cannot state that our region, in particular Russia, is unwaveringly moving towards democracy. Quite a number of facts testify to the opposite, such as the war in Chechnya and the related practices of the state. Institutional racism is the worst. For example, war is waged in Russia against citizens, against minorities in different parts of Russia, and those citizens can not get justice from the state. The war of the state against citizens affects people living in the regions but if they move to other region they still face discrimination, loss of legal rights, discrimination also by the population they come to live amonst. Example: the police sends a letter to a landlord, he has to break the lease with the renter (small business) because of the renters Chetzen origin. This way people get isolated and poor. People working in humanitarian aid also become the enemy of the state. For example a man got wounded and they checked his papers while he was bleeding to death.
Alexander Ossipov talked about the new, more covert forms of racism supported by the state as well by the public opinion, he elaborated upon the policies of the so-called ‘protection’ of ethno-demographic balance and illustrated his point by referring to the situation of the Meskhetin Turks. Racism is presented as inter ethnic management.
For example, of the Turkish minority (mostly Muslim) expelled from Usbekistan (Meskhetin Turks), some fled to Russia, but federal and regional authorities refuse to see them as citizens and they are denied all fundamental rights, not allowed to vote, have their own business, have a job etcetera
The state does not admit that this is racism; on the contrary, the state describes the problems as ‘normal athnic tensions’ between the migrants and the ethnic majority. To make matters worse, the media decribe the muslim migrants as a ‘ potential 5th collumn’which wants to ‘muslimize the country’.
Zinaida Strogalchtchikova talked about the stae programs for protection of minorities and idigenous peoples and their inefficiency. After the fall of the regime of the Soviet State, nationalism is on the rise, which is not surprising, but the reaction of state is. In the 90ties you could say the state didn’t know how to handle the new situation(free press etc) but this is a lot of years ago so by now it can only be explained as disinterest of the state.
Gavkhar Dzhuraeva spoke on denial of racism by the state. In the past we only had to deal with propaganda, but today skinhead youth also take action. Violent activity is not punished, it is considered as hooliganism and not as racism, and Law enforcement officials secretly support the skinheads. Racist, xenophobe and anti-Semitic statements by federal officials have never been denounced. The President of the Russian parliament has a secretary who is a well known right wing extremist.
Zinaida also reported on the situation of the Indigenous peoples of the north -- Weps people (one of the small peoples). With the start of perestroika indiginous peoples in the Russian republics were worried but hopeful. Everyone agreed indiginous peoples were the most vurnerable group. It took 10 years to get law for them but disappointingly most rules seemed very useless and most were in contradiction with the federal law, and thus cannot be implemented and are of declarative character only. By law, economic assistance should given to indigenous peoples (national minorities) but there is no budget for it. as soon as this law for assistance was passed, the budgetary programs of support for indiginous peoples were taken out and the department in charge of implementing the law was disbanded.
The Indigenous Peoples of Russia also have the right by law to form their own governing bodies, for instance to preserve their own culture, but to this day there is no funding to do this.
Boris Pustyntsev concluded the presentation by talking about the racist prejudices and the pressing need for educational programs on intercultural and human rights issues.