Gazeta.ru
Court ruling pushes race-hate thugs underground
The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office has suspended the activities of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and will seek a court decision to declare it an extremist organization. The movement’s leaders warn that this will only force their members to go underground and that it risks sparking repeat riots on Manezh Square.
The Moscow Prosecutor’s Office investigated whether the Movement Against Illegal Immigration was within the law and concluded that “it is pursuing extremist goals and objectives.” Prosecutor Yury Semin personally signed the ruling suspending the group’s activity, his next move will be to seek a court ruling banning it.
Movement spokesmen told Gazeta.ru that they had only just received a copy of the ruling. “Plainclothes officers from the Moscow anti-extremism squad gave the document to movement leader Vladimir Yermolayev in Gostiny Dvor, where we had a news conference scheduled for today,” Alexander Belov (Potkin), DPNI’s informal leader, said. He believes the authorities chose not to warn them about the ban so as not to spark a protest.
Now Belov and his followers propose “taking all possible legal action.” But he is less than confident that the ruling will be in his favor. “There is no real court system here so the decision will be a formality,” Belov said. Even after the ban, which Belov describes as a done deal, the Dpni.org site and “public control centers” will stay in the open – units of the movement that render legal aid to “people in conflict situations,” i.e. nationalists facing extremism charges.
“The authorities have banned the largest nationalist organization and the need for a large-scale national-oriented political structure is now more pressing than ever before,” Belov argues. He is confident that a right-wing party will appear in Russia, though he is not going to register one formally. He has a stark warning for the authorities: the nationalists will call people out onto the streets.
Dmitry Demushkin, former leader of Slavic Union, said exactly that almost a year ago: “We will simply stop reining in the ‘autonomous’ gangs, who knife Tajiks and blow up markets.” However, when the Slavic Union was banned in April 2010, human rights activists did not observe any spike in the activity of neo-Nazi killers on Russian streets: legal nationalists and ‘autonomous’ cells essentially do not cooperate with each other, while autonomous radicals fill their blogs, forums and online communities with repeated calls to kill both Demushkin and Belov, deeming them traitors.”
No deadline has been set for examining the ban. The precedent is not encouraging: only a few days after the Slavic Union was banned, Demushkin set up a new nationalist organization registered under the name of Slavic Force.
Izvestia
Russia drafts anti-gender discrimination law
Russia’s Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development has proposed a bill guaranteeing equal rights and opportunities to men and women, Minister Tatiana Golikova said. Analysts, however, remain skeptical.
Although Russian legislation includes several anti-gender discrimination acts, it lacks a single federal law preventing it. Golikova could not say when the new law, On state guarantees of equal rights and freedoms to men and women and equal opportunities for exercising these rights and freedoms, will be adopted.
“We are reviewing the legislation and will draft a single act protecting women’s rights,” Golikova said at a meeting with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay. “This is a demanding task,” she added.
Analysts see little or no point in this initiative.
“The international institutions Russia is trying to please with this act are out of date, including the International Labor Organization,” said Sergei Smirnov from the Higher School of Economics. Other classic regulations such as the Labor Code are obsolete as well. Only 20% of the Russian workforce actually abide by it, while some 50 million don’t, and there aren’t any riots. So I assume they are happy.”
Last year Russia ratified the Holidays with Pay Convention, but that changed nothing: the same will happen with the gender law.
“Russia could adopt it. It is unlikely to entail any additional costs. If Russia needs this law to boost its international prestige, let’s adopt it. But no one will notice if it is cancelled,” Smirnov said.
“This law distracts Russians from more important problems such as the lack of adequate safeguards for motherhood and childhood,” said Pavel Salin from the Center for Current Politics. “It is pure PR. Russia has a series of regulatory acts that not only support gender equality but even gave women certain privileges: for example women are not allowed to lift heavy loads in the workplace, while men are.”
According to him, this kind of image-creation policy may lead to absurd consequences.
“This law may lead to extremes now witnessed in other countries, for example the United States. It won’t surprise me if they eventually replace the words mother and father in official documents with some ‘gender-neutral’ term,” he suggested.
Tatiana Maleva, director of the Independent Social Policy Institute think tank, does not believe adopting a law will solve the problem of gender inequality. Although statistically more women than men have university degrees, even these women still tend to avoid occupations which would put them in leading roles in the national economy. They prefer working as teachers or doctors, while economics and law are dominated by men.
“I have just been to a government meeting on the strategy until 2020. Out of the 80 participants, only six were women – I counted. Can a law do anything to change this ratio? I don’t think so. Laws can only focus on specific issues. It is not laws that matter but the accepted practice,” she concluded.
Moskovsky Komsomolets
Brazilian football in Chechnya
Russia’s Chechen Republic has come up with a truly luxurious way to mark the beginning of the country’s football season. On March 10, 2011, Grozny, the republic’s capital, will host a football match between the Chechen team and Brazil’s 2002 national team that won the FIFA World Cup. The republic’s head, Ramzan Kadyrov, will personally determine his team’s lineup and will don the captain’s armband.
The Chechen Republic’s Minister for Physical Fitness, Sports and Tourism, Khaidar Alkhanov, said that this would give Chechen residents the chance to see football stars like Kaka, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho. The minister added that Ruud Gullit, head coach with the leading Chechen football club Terek, backed the idea and even pledged to help organize the game. This prominent Dutch footballer certainly knows in person many of the players on the Brazilian team.
But even with all Gullit’s personal acquaintances, the Brazilians are unlikely to travel all that way to play for nothing. Players usually get some kind of remuneration for games like this. For example, playing with the Russian national team in Moscow in 2006 earned the Brazilian football federation $1.5 million. This time, the stakes are likely to be higher since Grozny has the reputation of being slightly less safe than Moscow.
However, the main issue here is who will have to pay up, rather than the payment itself. Chechnya is virtually completely subsidized – approximately 90% of its budget comes from Russia’s federal center. Of the $17 million set aside in the Chechen budget to support medium-sized businesses in 2011, $12.3 million will come from the federal budget.
But it is also possible that the game will be funded from sources other than the republic’s budget. Kadyrov, too, has many friends around the world, mostly ethnic Chechens, who might want to make a contribution to the costs incurred, or who might even have done so already. And then there are the businessmen who are eager to invest in Chechen football.
According to Minister Alkhanov, Terek got a new sponsor this January. The minister said that Bulat Chagayev, who lives in Switzerland and who “had been actively assisting the republic’s restoration” has now decided to help raise Terek to a new level. That may be so, but perhaps it’s time the republic started tackling the more fundamental issues such as small business development, and stopped living on federal subsidies?
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