Russian court bans neo-Nazis as pressure on group intensifies

MOSCOW, April 19 (JTA) — Russia’s largest and best-organized far-right organization has come under fire on several fronts. This week, a court in the Russian capital banned the Moscow branch of the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity movement, a group that may have been responsible for an attack last week on a synagogue in Minsk, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Belarus. The court hearing was initiated by Moscow city prosecutors, who charged among other things that RNU members were involving minors in their political activities and that the group was operating illegal branches in other parts of Russia. None of the charges brought against the group, whose members wear black uniforms and sport armbands reminiscent of the Nazi swastika, centered on its neo-Nazi character or on its attempts to incite ethnic, religious or racial strife, a punishable crime under Russian law. Just the same, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who last December blocked the RNU from holding its national convention in Moscow, hailed the court’s decision and said his office will continue to work against the neo-Nazi group. Before the verdict was announced, RNU leaders said they would ignore the court decision, adding that they plan to participate in Russia’s parliamentary elections, which are slated for December. Last year, the RNU’s leader, Alexander Barkashov, said he may run in next year’s presidential elections. In a separate development, authorities in the Russian town of Borovichi banned neo-Nazi activities, granted a public space to the local Jewish community and initiated a seminar to counter anti-Semitic and hate propaganda among the town’s youth. The moves followed an international campaign launched by U.S. Jewish groups after the tiny Jewish community of 200 in Borovichi, a town of 90,000 people about 300 miles northwest of Moscow, reported a dramatic increase in the neo- Nazi activities. Last fall, hundreds of stickers saying “Jews Are Rubbish” and showing a man throwing a Star of David into a garbage can appeared in Borovichi. And this year, dozens of posters proclaiming, “The Yid Is a Plot Against Russians” appeared across town. According to Edward Alexeev, the leader of Borovichi’s Jewish community, his repeated appeals to the town’s mayor seeking support for the community yielded no results. But, he added, the situation changed dramatically after a campaign was launched by the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews and the San Francisco-based Bay Area Council of Jewish Rescue and Renewal. As a result of the campaign, Alexeev said, the mayor received during the past two months at least 600 letters of concern from across the United States, including members of the U.S. Congress, and from such countries as Germany, Spain and Japan. The authorities “immediately changed their stand,” Alexeev said in a telephone interview, adding that he was amazed to see the result. The anti-Semitic posters “disappeared overnight,” he said. The mayor also turned to the Jewish community for help in organizing a two- day seminar aimed at curbing the activities of neo-Nazi groups. In the April 12 attack on the Minsk synagogue, which coincided with the Orthodox Christian Easter, arsonists set fire to the entrance of the Dauman Street Synagogue and the slogan “Bash the Yids, Save Russia” was spray- painted on the synagogue’s wall. No one was injured in the incident, but the synagogue’s door was destroyed. Yuri Dorn, a Jewish leader in Minsk, said teen-agers with the RNU may have been responsible for the attack. Yakov Basin, a long-time Jewish activist and the director of the Minsk-based Belarus-American Bureau on Human Rights, which is affiliated with the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, said the incident was just another sign of rising anti-Semitism in this former Soviet republic. According to Basin, RNU supporters have recently been distributing anti-Semitic materials throughout Minsk. Earlier this year, a group of RNU supporters severely beat three members of a leading human rights group in Belarus.