Whatever the motives,
there is a disturbing lack of interest from politicians and the authorities
into the highly questionable activities by certain neo-Nazi formations,
especially in Crimea, but also growing in Kyiv.
Crimean journalists
report that a group of neo-Nazis is holding military training sessions in
Kerch. They call themselves the Kerch branch of the Russian chauvinist and
rightwing movement Russian National Unity. These are no innocent games: photos
posted on social networks show the “fighters,” whose faces are obscured,
throwing Molotov cocktails or fighting with the use of knives. In one case they
perform a Nazi salute.
Volodymyr Prytula, head
of the Committee for Monitoring Press Freedom in Crimea, notes that
despite lively media interest in recent weeks, there has been no response at
all from the authorities, or from the two recently-created “anti-fascist”
committees in Kerch, one linked to the Party of the Regions and the other to
the Communist Party. The press services of the Crimean Cabinet of Ministers and
Parliament claim that they haven’t seen any reports. Nor have the Crimean
police or Security Services (SBU) shown any interest, despite the Nazi
symbolism, the open link to a group preaching Russian supremacy and the formidable
arsenal of weapons and fighting techniques shown in the video. Just why the
authorities have their blinders on remains unclear.
Law enforcement bodies
are also looking elsewhere when it comes to other dubious activities directly
linked to the above-mentioned Maxim Martsinkevich. The latter, known widely as
Tesak, first gained notoriety as a skinhead and the leader of Format 18 (1
stands for A; 8 for H – Hitler’s initials). The organization was
responsible for a number of shocking video clips preaching hatred against Asian
migrant workers, people living on the streets and members of the Antifa
(antifascist) movement.
One video, showing a staged
execution in a Moscow region forest, is believed to have been based on a real
killing. Martsinkevich has been sentenced twice for inciting racial violence
and has spent three years in prison. He was also arrested in February this year
in Minsk, Belarus, and charged with hooliganism after provoking a fight with
antifascists. According to February media reports, he could face a prison
sentence in Belarus, making it even less clear how he can be free to hold a
seminar on July 28 at the Kozatsky Hotel in Kyiv.
In fact, Martsinkevich
and his cronies have found a new activity which is presently being pushed in
Kerch, Yalta and Sevastopol, after building up a following in some 80 Russian
cities. The movement called “Okkupai-pedofilyai” is supposedly aimed at
fighting sexual abuse of minors. The tactics involve using young girls or
boys as “bait” in order to entice paedophiles to identify themselves online.
The movement’s members then use various means, almost certainly linked with
physical violence and humiliation, to force the latter to “repent” and denounce
their ways.
It is undoubtedly worrying that such “baits” have found plenty of
men eager for sex even when they learn that the person they believe they’re
talking to is only 14. On the other hand, the behaviour in question and the use
of child pornography are criminal offences which the law enforcement bodies are
obliged to respond to. Yet the latter are clearly failing to protect young
people by not doing so, helping nobody when they turn a blind eye to the
activities of these neo-Nazi vigilantes whose methods are as questionable as
their pro-Nazi leanings.
Those who see recent homophobic murders and the
horrific crimes committed by skinheads in Russia as unrelated, and the methods
described here for dissuading potential paedophiles as innocent, should note
the experience of one Kerch journalist. Iryna Sedova from the website
Kerch.fm received messages with death threats after publishing an
article entitled Who has taught Kerch adolescents to take the law into
their own hands and why? The author clearly outlines the neo-Nazi side to
the movement and writes that “Martsinkevich puts his credo as follows: Any of my projects are propaganda of Nazism,
even if I don’t give the Nazi salute in this picture.”
In June this year two
far-right U.S. bloggers who set up the Stop Islamization of America group, were
refused entry to the United
Kingdom on grounds that their presence would “not be conducive to the
public good.” Failure by Ukraine’s authorities to respond adequately to
organizations and individuals with clear neo-Nazi roots, methods and ideology
is against the public good and reveals holes in their public rhetoric.
Selective antifascism has as much to do with real opposition to fascism as
selective justice to the rule of law.
Halya Coynash is a
member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
