The former director of the UCSJ-founded Kazakhstan International Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law, Eugeny Zhovtis was released today after two-and-a-half years in a labor camp. In a phone conversation with UCSJ International Director Leonid Stonov, Zhovtis expressed gratitude to President of UCSJ Larry Lerner and all who supported him during his struggle.

The new Israeli Ambassador does not know there are political prisoners in Belarus.

On February 15 at his press-conference in Minsk the new Israeli Ambassador to Belarus Yosef Shagal stated that he knows nothing about existence of political prisoners in Belarus.

“I am a citizen of Israel, we do not have political prisoners. As for Belarus, I do not know, I should scan through newspapers. I will answer your question in half a year,” the Ambassador said answering the question of BelaPAN. “I am a journalist, and I know perfectly well how articles are written. Have you been in camps for political prisoners yourself?”

Read the rest of the story here: http://charter97.org/en/news/2012/2/15/48045/

When and where were you born?

Moscow, USSR 1931

How did you get involved with human rights in the Soviet Union?

Ever since I was a child I was interested in politics, and I even wanted to study humanities in history. But before I graduated high school, my father was arrested. He was accused of making anti-Soviet propaganda. Many of our friends and family thought it was a mistake. We knew it was government policy. My family understood from the beginning that Lenin and Stalin would have a damaging effect on the country. It was a very difficult time for our family. Even relatives were afraid to visit and help us.

I decided to study biology because it was impossible to have a career in politics. I became a human rights activist in the 1980′s when my family applied to realize its dream of emigration to the U.S. We were denied, which made us “Refuseniks.” So, we worked with UCSJ to build the foundation for the first Soviet emigration law, which was eventually came to be in 1990.

I also organized  of group of other Refuseniks to monitor the visa office and expose them for denying people on illigitimate grounds. We also organized a conference called “Freedom of Movement for Everybody” in 1989. This did a lot to change public opinion. People went from believing that only enemies of socialism would want to leave the USSR to believing that people should be able to choose where to live. Emigration sped up and millions were able to leave. I’m proud that we did something very positive.

How long was your dad in jail?

He was in jail and in a concentration camp from 1949-1954. After Stalin’s death, his case was reopened, and he was deemed “rehabilitated.” In 1962 he died at 65, weakened by the hard labor. He wrote a book of stories about the concentration camp called “In the Past Night.”

When did you leave USSR?

December, 7 1990. My wife Natasha received permission first, but refused to go alone. Our son emigrated one year before us. When UCSJ invited her come to the U.S. and speak on behalf of our reunification. UCSJ arranged for her to meet President Bush in the oval office. He issued a statement about our family and the Soviet government gave me permission to go.

How has the human rights situation changed since the fall of the Soviet Union?

It has improved: Stalin was horrible, after him it was a little better. Now, some human rights are enforced. Some are not. The goal of many groups is to legalize freedom of association. Registration should be simplified. Political parties, NGO’s, groups. Association is legal as long as you aren’t public, but once you have  a blog or a lawyer your repressed. Strikes are also outlawed. Much of television and books are censored. The Internet is also partly censored. You have to be very brave to criticize the government. Corruption is very bad. The court system is not independent.

What have you been working on recently?

I want to write some memoirs about my Refusenik days and maybe my whole life. Also, the Eurasia foundation project. It will teach young Russians to be tolerant of other races and religions. It will be the first of its kind.

by Alexander Woodend

By Daniil Meshcheryakov, Executive Director of the Moscow Helsinki Group

Politically active groups continued to advocate for a nationalist agenda within the broader protest movement. In recent discussions organized by the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation called “The Nationalist threat in Russia: Trends, Prospects and Countermeasures” the results of 2011 were discussed, including the rise of xenophobia and a decrease in the number of hate crimes due to better law enforcement.

January marked the beginning of the electoral campaign in Russia, and the most important political event was the publication of an article by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called “Russia: the National Question” in the state newspaper. The caused a strong reaction from the public. The fact that the Prime Minister published an article on this subject shows its importance. Some of the articles provisions may be included in his presidential platform. However, experts doubt their feasibility. There are human rights concerns as well. It includes a proposal to tighten the registration standards for migrants in order to counter the flow of “illegal migrants” and social conflict. Also, despite the recognition of the importance of education in developing adequate attitudes to cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, Putin chose to focus on efforts such as introducing compulsory examination of migrants in the Russian language, Russian history, and Russian culture.

The wave of social activism caused by the falsification of election results in December 2011 has resulted in a number of internal discussions within the civic movement on whether or not to cooperate with the nationalists. They have decided not to. The anti-fascist activists were united in honoring the memory of murdered human rights journalists Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova in 22 Russian cities. This caused a violent reaction from the neo-Nazis who attacked participants in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh.

On January 21, a rally of several hundred Moscow football fans was organized to demand the investigation of the attack on the fan of the Spartak football team member Alexey Ershov, who was wounded by Andronick Simonyan, an ethnic Armenian, in September, 2010. The protesters made sure that the case had been sent to court, echoing a similar incident last year. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Putin met with football fans regarding the upcoming World Cup to be held in Russia in 2018 and promised to pay proper attention to the “national question” in Russia.

According to the Sova Center, in January 2012, at least 11 people suffered from racist or neo-Nazi attacks. One native of Azerbaijan was killed and 10 people were assaulted. The federal list of extremist materials, was updated in January four times and seven new items were added to it, including several related to Islamic fundamentalism and a brochure titled “Expansion from the South. Stop it?!”.

“‘Lviv is known in the world not because of hotels but because of its common  cultural heritage,’ said Meylakh Sheykhet, who heads Lviv’s Jewish community.  Sheykhet is part of a group that filed several lawsuits to stop construction of  the hotel.”

http://www.kyivpost.com/news/guide/general/detail/96873/#ixzz1lLgL8x2P

“Meylakh Sheykhet, Ukraine’s representative in the Union of Councils for Jews in  the former Soviet Union, is a driving force in preserving western Ukraine’s  decaying Jewish cultural heritage. He said his aim is to try to preserve as much  of it as possible, however challenging that may be financially or  practically.”

http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/108659/#ixzz1lLgqvQPr

State obstruction will keep the Russian democratic party of the ballot this year. They were required to collect two million signatures, which they did, but since a portion were scanned and not originals–something they had to restort to to meet the dealine–their entire petition was discarded. Putin’s party will benefit as a result: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/yavlinsky-says-yabloko-is-in-the-right/452038.html

This is a good editorial from “The Moscow Times” which discusses lack of ideas on ethnic policy. The 20% of the population that is non-native Russian will have to wait for new policies.: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/putins-nationality-dilemma/451918.html

On the night of January 1 in the town of Kremenchug (Poltavskaya oblast’) an unknown person threw a Molotov cocktail at a local synagogue. The reinforced concrete beam at the entrance to the synagogue was damaged as a result the arson.

A memoir about a brave, doomed refusenik and her courageous American friend.

Photo by: Courtesy of the kitrossky family

Moscow in the 1980s was a grim and dangerous place where talking to an American on the street was enough to attract the unwanted attention of the KGB. This is where Lisa Paul, then a University of Minnesota coed, came to work for two years as a nanny for an American businessman’s children.
It’s not clear why Paul, a devout Catholic, took an interest in Russian language and culture. But it is clear from her book that the education she received abroad was not at all what she expected.

“I began my stay in Moscow on the side of left-leaning peace activists in the United States,” she writes. “I was optimistic and believed [in] the simplistic notion that if the American and Russian people came to know and understand each other, we could peacefully coexist. But one experience after another during my second year in Moscow chipped away at that optimism.”
Her Russian-language tutor, Inna Kitrosskaya Meiman, turned out to be a Jewish dissident. Paul became an activist on behalf of Meiman, who was refused permission to get cancer treatment in any of the countries that offered to pay for her trip and medical care – most likely as punishment for her refusenik husband Naum’s participation in the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group.

It is from Meiman that the book gets its title. She shared with Paul, and later with the world, a folktale about a fish so scared of a certain undersea predator that it dares not leave its hiding place during the daytime hours for fear of being caught. Meiman, then 51, was determined to “swim in the daylight” no matter the cost.
In addition to Meiman, Paul befriended several young Russians despite the danger involved, and their stories also opened Paul’s eyes to their Orwellian reality. In fact, her first act of derringdo “in the land that’s the exact opposite of everything we are and everything we know” was helping a friend’s mother secure a copy of George Orwell’s 1984.

The woman, a reviewer at the Soviet institute of censorship, had mislaid the book. If the loss were discovered, she would have been fired, evicted and sent to jail. As Orwell’s books were banned in the USSR, buying a replacement was impossible. Paul arranged to receive a copy her mother mailed in Minnesota to an acquaintance at the American Embassy.

At one point, Paul even considered a sham marriage to Gary, a young black marketer, to get him safely to the United States. Meiman and others dissuaded her. Gary successfully feigned mental illness to get out of serving with the Soviet army in Afghanistan, but his story did not end happily.

Sadly, neither did Meiman’s.

While still in Russia, Paul helped arrange for Meiman (who was already well known to US diplomats and politicians such as Colorado Sen. Gary Hart) to be interviewed by an American reporter. That taped interview proved pivotal in bringing Meiman’s plight to the masses.

Back in Minnesota, Paul embarked on a 25-day hunger strike in an attempt to expedite a solution to Meiman’s desperate situation. The ensuing publicity brought Paul many speaking engagements and ultimately took her to Washington, where she worked with the Soviet Jewry movement and government officials to get Meiman a visa.

But diplomacy is and was a painfully slow process, particularly in pre-Internet days. By the time Meiman arrived at Washington’s Georgetown University Hospital in 1987, it was much too late. She died within a few weeks, and to make matters worse she died without her husband, whose release the Americans could not obtain. Probably as a result of press reports surrounding Meiman’s death, he soon got permission to emigrate to Israel, as did her son, Lev.

The ever-optimistic Meiman nevertheless felt she had won an important victory. As she wrote to Hart, “The hospital is just beautiful, but that is not the most important thing. The most important thing is the sensation of being among friends, of being cared for and about.”

She received many visitors, including former dissidents such as Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky, who’d been freed only the year before. She savored feeling that “for the first time in my life, I did not have to look over my shoulder with worry the KGB might barge in.”

At Meiman’s funeral, former ABCNews Moscow bureau chief Anne Garrels (now with National Public Radio) told the folktale about the fish.

“Anne made the point that Inna had been swimming freely in the daylight long before she left the Soviet Union and that it was her great triumph to be free in America before she died,” writes Paul.

This first-person memoir about a brave, doomed refusenik and her courageous American friend is a welcome addition to the body of literature about an unfathomably cruel regime that destroyed its own people. Paul’s unusually sharp powers of recollection make this bleak period in modern history come alive.

We support the demands of human rights organizations to cancel the results of the election and initiate new ones under strong monitoring by local and international organizations and media. We were pleased that the protests have been peaceful and cooperative with police.

UCSJ wishes great success to our Russian human rights friends and partners in developing democratic practice, institutions and traditions. We are ready to help them approach these high goals.