Moscow Times - 06.03.2002

 

The Moscow Times

Police Chief Says Sign Was Not Anti-Semitic

By Oksana Yablokova

Days after a booby-trapped road sign reading "Death to Yids!" exploded near Moscow and injured a woman, Jewish community leaders are demanding the ouster of a police official who said the slogan was not explicitly anti-Semitic.

"It is debatable whether the placement of the sign is wrongdoing in and of itself," Nikolai Vagin, police chief for the Moscow region's Lenin district, told the Izvestia newspaper Thursday. "I think that, formally speaking, the slogan 'Death to Yids!' is not a call to incite ethnic hatred. In our country, the word 'yid' gets applied to all kinds of people."

Avram Shayevich, a top rabbi, the Russian Jewish Congress and the Moscow Jewish Community replied in a statement that Vagin's remarks should be regarded as "an attempt to justify or at least to downplay the potential dangers of the activities of neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic organizations."

"Coming from an official, a police colonel, the statement maintaining that the slogan bears no call to incite ethnic hatred is no less outrageous than the actions of those who staged the terrorist act," the statement said. "For fascist organizations, such statements are latent approval, a sign of the fact that their actions will continue to go unpunished."

In the Izvestia interview, Vagin also denied that his subordinates had been informed about the sign, stuck in the ground near Kievskoye Shosse some 32 kilometers outside Moscow. On May 26, a woman who tried to remove the sign, Tatyana Sapunova, 28, sustained severe injuries to both eyes when the sign exploded.

Vagin and other Moscow region police officials could not be reached for comment Friday.

The colonel's remarks in Izvestia clearly contradict the stance of law enforcement and government officials at the highest level, who have lamented the rise of anti-Semitic and racially motivated violence in the capital and other big cities.

Immediately after the incident with the sign, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov promised to take the investigation under his personal control. Vladimir Zorin, the Cabinet minister in charge of nationalities issues, condemned the booby trap as "an insidious provocation."

Sapunova remains in an intensive care ward, although her condition has improved slightly, Interfax reported Thursday, quoting her doctor at the First City Hospital.

Dr. Yelena Litvina said Sapunova's right eye has improved while her left eye needs more tests and treatment, but she did not say how serious the damage would be for the patient's vision.

Meanwhile, in the latest anti-Semitic attack, the director of the Sakharov Museum said Friday that a mural of the late dissident and Nobel peace laureate was vandalized overnight.

Yury Samodurov said the 5-meter-wide and 3-meter-high mural in a square outside the museum had been spray-painted with anti-Semitic and obscene slogans.

The mural's artist, Dmitry Vrubel, was to study the damage to determine whether it can be restored.