Vienna, March 25 – The International Union for Assistance to Migrant Workers announced over the weekend that its members will form “self-defense” units to defend themselves against attack if what they described as “fascist” tendencies in Russia intensify over the coming months. The union, led by Islamic Committee chairman Geydar Dzhemal’, held a regional constituent congress in St. Petersburg on Saturday. Organizers stressed that they plan to recruit and defend both workers from former Soviet republics as well as from non-Russian regions of the Russian Federation (www.zaks.ru/new/archive/view/55087). At the session, Dzhemal said that “we will create such conditions in which such fascist measures as deportation will be impossible,” adding that he did not exclude that “if fascist tendencies in Russia cross a definite line,” then, in the words of one report, “the Union will create self-defense ...
Vienna, March 24 – Many in Moscow and the West assume that Russia is at risk of a political upheaval because the regime there is no longer in a position to buy the people off with petro-dollars, but that assumption reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Russian social compact, a leading Russian commentator says. In an essay in “Vzglyad” yesterday, Leonid Radzikhovsky says that the social compact which exists in Russia now as in the past is based not on the trade off of rights for goods, as may be the case elsewhere, but rather on the fear by both sides that instability would threaten not only national well-being but possibly national survival (www.vz.ru/columns/2009/3/23/267439.html). Even in other countries, he suggests, the notion that people are ready to sacrifice their rights to the ...
Columbus, March 6 – Despite statements by anonymous Interior Ministry officials that no order allowing the militia to shoot demonstrators exists and their denunciation of human rights leader Ludmila Alekseyeva for saying the contrary, each day is bringing new confirmation of the existence of such a directive and ever more disturbing details of its content.MVD Investigative journalists at the Irkutsk portal Babr.ru have assembled not only the denials but much more important the confirmation of the existence of this measure by a former deputy interior ministry and an analysis of its contents by human rights activists who work closely with Russia’s ombudsman in this area (babr.ru/?pt=news&event=v1&IDE=51335). The confirmation of the existence of this order came from Vladimir Vasil’yev, former first deputy minister of the interior who in 2005 was ...
From: "John Crowfoot" <sredny@freenet.co.uk> Subject: Murders of journalists in Russia Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2009
OVER 150 JOURNALISTS HAVE BEEN MURDERED IN RUSSIA DURING THE PAST 15 YEARS A commentary on the recent interview by Major-General Gribakin (police) By John Crowfoot International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) analyst 13 February 2008
On 4 February Major-General Valery Gribakin told Itar-TASS that the “number of instances when revenge is taken on journalists for their publications and investigations is, as a percentage of the whole, not large”. To illustrate his assertion about the main reasons for violent deaths among journalists in Russia, the head of public relations at the Ministry of Internal Affairs gave eight examples from the last seven years. At the same time, the general stressed that “those in charge of the ministry and its operative departments, of course, keep a special watch over the killing of journalists,” (http://www.mvd.ru/press/interview/6115/ ). ...
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