Vienna, June 12 \u2013 A Tatar activist recently given an 18-month suspended sentence for articles protesting Moscow\u2019s Russification policies, says that the Internet activists may have kept him out of jail and, given the government\u2019s increasing pressure on other media, they are often a last line of defense for the rights of ethnic and religious minorities in that country.
\nIn an interview given to an independent Tatar journalist, Rafis Kashapov, a leader of the All-Tatar Social Center (VTOTs), explained that he has simply tried through his articles to attract the attention of society and the government to problems others have said less about (www.rupor.info\/analitika\/2009\/06\/09\/lidera-oppozicii-v-tatarstane-osudili-k-lisheniju-\/).
\nAmong the issues he has raised are \u201cthe policy of Russification of national minorities, the restriction of the rights of Muslims, the deportation of peoples, fascism, corruption, drug abuse, alcoholism, depravity, and other social problems\u201d that he believes can only be addressed by open and honest discussion.
\nIf Russia were a normal democratic state, he suggested, \u201cthe leadership of the country would react positively\u201d and seek a resolution of them. But in Russia, \u201cinstead of that, [the powers that be] opened a criminal case against\u201d him, charging Kashapov with promoting extremism.
\nWhile the authorities have been angered by Kashapov for a long time, the last straw appears to have been his essay \u201cSay No to Christianization!\u201d posted online earlier this year in which he protested the actions of officials who allowed an Orthodox priest to baptize Tatar babies without the permission of their parents.
\nAddressing that issue in particular, Kashapov noted that the authorities had not taken the obvious step of inviting Christian and Muslim leaders to meet with them in order to overcome the problems these baptisms created and that, once they opened a case against him, prosecutors never questioned either the priest who baptized the children or the official who permitted it.
\nUnfortunately, however, the Russian government had no interest in finding the truth or even in examining his case more or less honestly, the Tatar leader said. Not only were two FSB agents present at every hearing, an indication of the political sensitivities of the case, but the judge routinely ignored protests by his lawyers.
\nKashapov suggested that \u201cthe Internet possibly played a large role\u201d in keeping him out of jail. Not only did he and his supporters place information about the case online when they had no other way of getting past the government\u2019s information blockade, but \u201cthe majority\u201d of those who read these materials \u201cunderstood on whose side the truth is.\u201d
\nMoreover, many of those who learned about his case, Kashapov continued, supported him in court, signed appeals, and organized demonstrations and protests on his behalf. And he used this interview to \u201cexpress gratitude\u201d to these individuals and also to the administrators of the sites of the independent information agencies.\u201d
\nKashapov said that their efforts were especially important because \u201cat the present time in Russia is being conducted an unwritten nationality policy based on force over non-Russian peoples which precludes their free development, subjects them to humiliation and Russification and takes away their spiritual and material wealth.\u201d
\nIn Tatarstan, this policy involves the ban on the use of the Latin script, the closure of Tatar schools, and the problem of opening replacement in the Tatar language. And as is the case with many other national minorities, it involves Moscow\u2019s decision to reduce to almost nothing the \u201cnational-regional component\u201d in the curriculum of the public schools.
\nThose legitimate concerns are exacerbated, he said, by the Russian government\u2019s flagrant ignoring of extremist behavior by Russian nationalist groups, like Spartak football fans who displayed pro-Hitler banners at a Kazan match, and by the Russian Orthodox Church, which is trying to baptize or convert the historically Islamic Tatars.
\nIndividuals and groups in Tatarstan who have tried to expose and oppose such things, Kashapov said, have suffered. Indeed, he said, they like those elsewhere who share their commitment to freedom and national rights increasingly find themselves in a situation that is \u201cdifficult and dangerous.\u201d
\nBut he added, neither he nor they have any choice but to proceed: \u201cEvery time, when we multiply a lie, speak an untruth, or commit wrong actions, then by so doing we recognize and support the authoritarian powers that be of Russia, we work for it, and that means we strengthen it.\u201d
\nAnd he added, \u201cplaying at democracy in Putin\u2019s Russia has come to an end. It turns out that now the most reliable means [for the government] to resolve a problem is to \u2018bury\u2019 an individual just as in Stalin\u2019s time.\u201d According to the calculations of Moscow\u2019s leadership once again, \u201cwhere there is no person, there is no problem.\u201d
\nKashapov said that he has been physically threatened for his activities and that his family and friends had told him that \u201cit would be better if [he] went abroad,\u201d lest the powers that be \u201cput [him] away in jail or still worse kill [him].\u201d But he told his interlocutor, he has no plans to do so, preferring instead to continue his work in and for Tatarstan.
\nHis lawyers have filed an appeal which is scheduled to be heard by the republic supreme court, but Kashapov does not expect to win in any Russian venue, given the politics of his situation. Instead, he — like so many other opponents of the regime — is already looking to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for legal vindication.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/windowoneurasia.blogspot.com\/2009\/06\/window-on-eurasia-internet-last-line-of.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vienna, June 12 \u2013 A Tatar activist recently given an 18-month suspended sentence for articles protesting Moscow\u2019s Russification policies, says that the Internet activists may have kept him out of jail and, given the government\u2019s increasing pressure on other media, they are often a last line of defense for the rights of ethnic and religious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":462741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[604,820],"class_list":["post-13078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","tag-tataristan","tag-tatars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}