Is Lydia Bainova an “Extremist”?

Lydia Bainova. Photo courtesy of Newsru.com and Tayga.info

FSB Files Charges against Khakassia Woman for Social Media Post Defending the Republic’s Indigenous Population
Newsru.com
July 24, 2018

The secret services have opened a criminal investigation into Lydia Bainova, a 30-year-old Abakan resident, after she published a post on the VK social media network. The mother of a young child, Ms. Bainova promotes Khakas culture. Tayga.info reports she has been accused of inciting ethnic hatred. According to the website, the FSB’s Khakassia office has charged the young woman with violating Article 280 Part 2 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code, which forbids public calls for “extremism” through the media or interent.

Tayga.info quotes the FSB’s indictment, which alleges Bainova “realized her criminal intentions using an Asus brand laptop with access to the internet.”

She posted a text containing the following passage: “At such moments, one feels like organizing a revolution, a coup, giving back power and land to our people, winning them back.”

FSB Investigator Marov decided the passage was a public call for “extremism,” Tayga.info reports.

However, the indictment does not quote Bainova’s entire post, which largely deals with cases of harassment suffered by Khakassia’s indigenous inhabitants. Bainova, for example, told her readers that children were told that only ethnic Russians were allowed in the playroom of an Abakan establishment.

“Some have been lucky not to encounter nationalism. During the twenty-nine years of my life in Abakan, I have encountered it constantly. My mother and father have constantly been the target of trenchant comments, like, ‘You’re Khakas and you got a three-room flat in the center of town,” or, ‘You’re a Khakas woman, but you dress so well,’ and so on,” Ms. Bainova wrote on VK.

Ms. Bainova has denied her guilt. She believes it was her public outreach work that attracted the FSB’s attention. She popularizes Khakas culture, has been involved in an ethnic music festival, and advocates the preservation of Khakas traditions and the Khakas language.

Investigators commissioned a psycho-linguistic forensic examination of Ms. Bainova’s post. The examiners reached the same conclusion as the FSB. Ms. Bainova’s defense counsel said the forensic examination was performed “extremely unprofessionally.”

The maximum penalty for violating Article 280 Part 2 of the Russian Criminal Code is five years in prison. In early June, a court in Tver Region sentenced a local electrician to a two-year suspended sentence for publishing a post against Vladimir Putin. Earlier this year, a resident of Sevastopol was sentenced to two years in prison, while a Petersburg resident was sentenced to ten months in a penal colony on the same charges.

Translated by the Russian Reader

“Hysterical Russophobia”

Yet another victim of the “hysterical Russophobia” sweeping the US and Europe has been identified.

“The subjects of the new issue of RBC Magazine aren’t afraid of risks: they conceive their own projects and invest in unusual sectors of business. Nikolai Davydov, RBC’s Investor of the Year, left for the US with $100 in his pocket, but now he lives in a house on the California coastline.”

If “hysterical Russophobia” were a real thing, instead of a talking point for crypto-Putinists and just plain Russians who don’t know how to explain to their non-Russian neighbors why their homeland has become so “odd” in the past several years, you would have heard about Russian immigrants to the EU and US suffering the same main violence and putrid discrimination that Muslim, Asian, and African immigrants and asylum seekers suffer there, not to mention the relentless violence and staggering discrimination suffered by such absolutely 100% native Americans as Aboriginal Americans (i.e., Native Americans), African Americans, and Hispanic Americans in a land their peoples have been inhabiting from several centuries to several thousands of years.

But no, you never hear of such violence and discrimination against Russian immigrants, and the fact there is no such violence and discrimination against Russians (at least, not enough to show up on anyone’s radars) is a good thing, of course.

It does, however make you wonder what exactly this “hysterical Russophobia” is that has so many tongues wagging, but has absolutely no negative effect on the ability of actual, individual Russians to lead happy, productive, and violence- and discrimination-free lives in the countries where they have chosen to settle.

That’s an easy riddle to solve, however. “Hysterical Russophobia” is a non-phenomenon invented by a motley coalition of people with various political axes to grind, including sections of the mostly hilarious current western left, who for some reason have not heard the news about what has been happening in the Socialist Motherland the last twenty-five years or so or feign not to have heard it. They’re still defending Russia long after it became the world center of the blackest social and political reaction. That is, they’re defending a corrupt, oligarchic capitalist tyranny.

Why actual Russian immigrants might feel defensive about the old homeland is understandable, but they should figure out what’s worth defending and what’s not. The Putin regime, for example, literally has no redeeming features whatsoever, as a perusal of this blog, for example, and its predecessor, Chtodelat News, should persuade you, although there are thousands and millions of more credible sources of information out there that are even more persuasive than my occasional, half-baked efforts to knock some sense into your heads.

People who nevertheless hotly defend the Putin regime, wherever they’re from, immediately strike me as suspicious or hopelessly naive. And I’m not alone.

“10,000 articles in the left press about anti-Russian hysteria. They would have more impact if they ever acknowledged that this fucking bastard Putin is building a worldwide ultraright movement. Diana Johnstone told Counterpunch readers that Marine Le Pen was on the left, so you can understand how this sort of Red-Brown thing has been gestating for quite some time.” (Louis Proyect, as quoted by Raiko Aasa yesterday on Facebook)

And here is “hysterical Russophobia” at its most sinister!

‘Delfinov and Vrubel are part of a growing community of Russian artists, poets, writers and intellectuals who have turned Berlin into one of the most vibrant outposts of Slavic culture, a kind of Moscow-on-Spree that is light years away from the repressive world of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Delfinov, who moved to Berlin in 2001, says the influx has accelerated in the past five years, a period when Russians’ hopes of democratic change evaporated. Many of them quit the country after Putin returned in 2012 for a third term as president and veered sharply to the right, espousing a new nationalist rhetoric, clamping down on dissent and annexing Crimea. Official figures show there are now 22,000 Russian expats living in Berlin, up 6 per cent on 2015. “They are people who saw no future for themselves in Russia,” says Delfinov. “Middle-class people who just wanted to breathe.”’

Well, you’ve probably guessed I’m just being facetious.

I think it’s great that Russians can go anywhere and make new, happy, productive lives for themselves. It should be that way for everyone, of course. No one is illegal, and all that.

Yet, simultaneously, the Russian government has been working overtime over the last year to exacerbate the Syrian refugee crisis. But you’d be hard pressed to hear any of the nattily dressed émigrés, described in the Financial Times article, quoted above, or their countrymen saying anything whatsoever about that nasty business and their country’s role in it. Mum’s the word, I’ve got my life to live, and all that.

However, a fair number of Russians, in my experience (and not only mine), have had lots to say, paradoxically, about Germany and other European countries being “overrun” by refugees from Syria and other war zones. It turns out these “black” unfortunates, who come from completely other galaxies, apparently, don’t have the same right so seek a safe place to live and work in Berlin, Paris, London et al., as the now-“white” (as opposed to White) Russians do.

Isn’t that funny? TRR

Fleecing Foreigners Makes Us Happy, but Gays Make Us Sad

Happiness Coffee and Pastry Shop Chain Introduces Surcharge for Foreigners
Paperpaper.ru
August 23, 2016

There is an additional fee for groups of foreigners at the Happiness (Schastie) coffee and pastry shop on St. Isaac’s Square in Petersburg. A Paperpaper.ru editor discovered this while visiting the establishment. A surcharge of ten percent is added to the final bill.

The reasons for the surcharge are not spelled out either in the menu or on the bill. As the establishment’s manager explained to Paperpaper.ru, the surcharged was introduced at the “director’s personal orders.” Besides, the manager assured us that a line explaining the practice would soon appear in the menu.

The surcharge was confirmed by phone calls to the Happiness outlets on St. Isaac’s Square and Rubinstein Street.

The chain’s management informed Paperpaper.ru that the surcharge was indeed enforced in all of its outlets, but only vis-a-vis groups consisting wholly of foreigners. The rule has been in effect since November 2015. According to the chain’s rules, waiters warn customers that a ten-percent service charge will appear on their bill. Management also confirmed to Paperpaper.ru that the rule would be spelled out in the menu.

Article 62.3 of the Russian Federal Constitution states, “Foreign nationals and stateless persons shall enjoy in the Russian Federation the rights and bear the obligations of citizens of the Russian Federation, except for cases envisaged by federal law or international agreement of the Russian Federation.”

In addition, Article 19 of the Constitution guarantees “equality of rights and freedoms of human and citizen, regardless of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, property and official status, place of residence, religion, convictions, membership of public associations, and also of other circumstances.”

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central

Message on the home page of the Central Barbershop website: “The services in our barbershops are provided in strict keeping with in-house standards of service [sic], operating procedures, and service [sic]. You can be refused a service if it does not according with the company in-house standards. It is prohibited in the barbershop to bring or imbibe alcoholic beverages, for the female sex to be present, [and] for member of a non-traditional orientation [sic[ to be on the premises.” Curiously, all this discrimination is absent from the English-language version of the same page, which only blandly states, “Men’s barber services are performed in accordance with European and American requirements.”

Petersburg Barbershop Refuses to Serve Homosexuals
Paperpaper.ru
September 6, 2016

The Petersburg barbershop chain Central Barbershop has refused to serve homosexuals, according to its website. Women are also forbidden from being in its barbershops.

“The issue concerns me, since there are lots of gays and lesbians around. I had a bad experience of interacting with this group of people, and I would not like to see them in my salons. It is terrible they are everywere. But this is not homophobia, because homosexualists [sic] have their own places, and they can go there,” said Mikhail Korets, founder of the barbershop chain.

According to Korets, his employees will politely refuse to serve gays, citing a lack of time or available barbers. He compared this kind of refusal with the work of security guards at nightclubs, which do not let people into their establishments by saying there is no room.

According to Yuri Gavrikov, head of local LGBT organization Equality (Ravnopravie), the Petersburg barbershop chain is involved in discriminating against people. He compared the chain’s decision with racial discrimination in the US during the 20th century.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade VZ for the heads-up on the English-language website of the fascist barbers.

Ministry of Funny Walks

motyl-lightsoutforputin_hockey — Russian President Vladimir Putin skates during a training session of participants of the Night Ice Hockey League in Krasnaya Polyana, Sochi, Russia, January 6, 2016. Photo: Aleksey Nikolskiy/Reuters

Disabled Man Not Admitted to Ice Hockey World Championship Match Because He “Walked Funny”
Rosbalt
May 17, 2016

Roman Mironov, a Category I disabled man, was unable to attend a Ice Hockey World Championship match, despite the fact he had a complimentary ticket. He told his story to Rosbalt.

“I was given a complimentary ticket, because I am a volunteer and help people with disabilities. I decided to go to a hockey match at Yubileiny Arena [in Petersburg], but the police turned me away, saying I ‘walked funny.’ I asked them to substantiate their actions, but they refused to give me an explanation. I showed them my ticket, but they did not even want to look at it.”

According to Mironov, this was not the first time he had not been admitted to public events.

“There have been cases when I have not been admitted to public celebrations and football matches,” he said.

Mironov has childhood cerebral palsy, because of which, he admits, he has been the target of discrimination on more than one occasion.

The Russian Federal Interior Ministry officially announced that police do not exercise checkpoint and admission functions at sporting events.

“It should be noted the police’s job at sporting events, including the hockey championships, is solely to ensure public order,” the Interior Ministry said.

The Ice Hockey World Championship kicked off in Petersburg on May 6 and winds up on May 22.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Mediazona for the heads-up. Photo, above, courtesy of Foreign Affairs

The Orangutan Project

Last Saturday night, I read this story by Lika Frenkel on her Facebook page:

Near my house, just off Nevsky, two drunken Russian FC Zenit fans assaulted an Uzbek worker repairing the porch. They were giving him a ferocious beating, but when I cried for help, a a Russian dude popped up and yelled, “Young lady, those are our own Russian lads. They’re doing the right thing!” Thank God, another [Uzbek] worker came running and fought out his countryman’s attackers. I called the police. The Russians dashed off down Nevsky. Only a skateboarder reacted to my heart-rending cries of “Stop them! They beat up a man!” But it was too late: the fascists got away. The police went looking for them. I returned home and brought the Uzbeks clean towels. The young man’s head was badly injured. The other man turned out to be his brother. He said to me, “You think this is the first time? My brother is a doctor himself. He just arrived [in Russia]. I’m used to it. I would have given them what they had coming, only there are cameras everywhere here, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself.

Just like my fierce friend Lika Frenkel, Al Jazeera’s doco about former Perth zookeeper Leif Cocks and his Orangutan Project, below, will restore your faith not in humanity per se but in the fact that our planet still occasionally produces actual human beings, people capable of seeing and actively defending the humanity in Tajiks and Uzbeks (as in Lika’s case) and personhood in endangered and captive orangutans (as in Leif Cocks’s case).

If you are wondering how I make such absurd thematic leaps, it’s simple. After reading Lika’s late-night story, I got into bed and listened to this interview with Leif Cocks on ABC Radio National before drifting off to sleep.

Needless to say, a double dose of militant empathetic humanity like that made me sleep like a baby all through the night. All is not right with the world, to be sure, but there are heroes in our midst like Lika Frenkel and Leif Cocks. We need to identify them, celebrate them, and, most of all, emulate them.

Story translated by the Russian Reader. Image, above, courtesy of the Orangutan Project.

Sochi Opening Ceremony

Ilya Matveev

Common sense is based on a sense of measure, a sense of proportion. Common sense is simply impossible in Russia, because the very fact the Olympics are being held here does not jibe with any justice of “number and measure,” as Plato called it. Meaning, literally, there are the Olympics, and “there is nothing else to talk about.” The hospitals have no drugs, the countryside has no schools, roads and stores, the universities cannot pay salaries of more than 10,000 rubles [approx. 200 euros] a month, and the most widespread dwellings, after all these years, are shabby nine-storey prefabs, built forty years ago by authorities who still possessed a shred of conscience. If you work in a kindergarten you’re dirt poor. If you’re a pensioner, boil yourself buckwheat and ask at the shop for an eighth of a loaf of bread. And in the midst of all this there is the Olympics. No “discussion” whatsoever is possible here. It was hard to imagine that the renewed tradition of ancient sporting competitions would come to symbolize the total, final and irrevocable humiliation of absolutely all people in Russia.

Source: Facebook (with kind permission from the author)

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Sergei Loiko
Triumph of the Will

Every day Nina Toromonyan comes to feed her pets amid the ruins of her house in the center of Sochi.

The house and 25-acre plot with a view of the sea were confiscated by force and the house demolished, ostensibly because they impeded construction of Kurortny Avenue.

Thirteen people lived in the house, three families. They received total compensation of five million rubles [approx 105,000 euros]. Masked riot police toting machine guns evicted them on October 23, 2013, although Kurortny Avenue had already been built two kilometers from Nina’s house.

Her grandfather was officially granted the plot in 1947 in recognition of his heroism in World War Two.

None of the three related families who lived there has been able to buy themselves a house or even an apartment in Sochi. Like vagabonds, they find shelter where they can.

No one touched the homes to the right and the left of the plot. Experts says someone had set their sights on Nina’s property and used Putin’s Olympics to grab it on the sly. In fact, the prices in Sochi are such that the compensation payment should have been no less than forty million rubles [approx. 845,000 euros] .

When the riot police were dragging the bawling women from the house, Nina’s nine-year-old grandson Grisha shouted, “Don’t shoot, don’t kill us!” Trying to calm him down, his mother took his hand and said, “Don’t be afraid, son. They’re just making a movie—about fascists.”

Source: Facebook

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Fontanka.Ru
Four LGBT Activists Detained on Vasilievsky Island
February 7, 2014

Four gay activists were detained today on the Spit of Vasilievsky Island [in Petersburg] when they decided to take a picture with a banner on the way to the place where a protest action was planned.

The LGBT activists did not make it to Belinsky Bridge, where they had planned, according to a previously circulated press release, to unfurl the meters-long banner in support of Olympic values.

As Fontanka.Ru has learned, along the way the activists decided to take a picture on the Spit. However, before they could unfurl the banner, emblazoned with the slogan “Any form of discrimination . . . is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement,” police officers arrived at the spot and detained them.

According to preliminary reports, among the detained is a young man and three young women, one of whom is pregnant. They are being taken to the 16th police precinct.

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Elena Kostyuchenko

Well, I’m home.

The short version is that during the four hours at Kitai-Gorod police station [in Moscow] Lynne Reid and Knicks Nemeni were handcuffed and kicked, Gleb Latnik was punched and pulled by the hair, and Ginger was put in a choke hold. I got off relatively easy: first, they suggested I “suck their cocks,” then they spat in my face.

Oh yeah, “You all should be burned” was among the remarks they made.

None of the policemen were wearing badges.

They enjoyed themselves. They confiscated our telephones. They sat there looking through our photos and leafing through our text messages.

A defense lawyer (an aide to MP Ilya Ponomaryov) was not let in to see us.

Then I was simply kicked out of the police station, with no arrest report, no nothing. “[He or she] sang a song to the tune of the Russian national anthem with distorted lyrics” was written in the arrest reports of the people who got them.

That’s not true. We sang our country’s national anthem, including the parts about “our free fatherland” and “you are unique in the world.”

We sang the national anthem all the way to the end.

It’s excellent singing the national anthem on Red Square. It’s nice on Red Square in general. We need to go there more often.

Oh yes. When we left the cafe where we met before the protest, the police were already waiting for us. Dear LGBT activists, phones really are bugged, email really is scanned, and text messages are received not only by the people they’re sent to. Use alternative means of communication and take care of each other.

Love triumphs, both at the Olympics and just like that.

Source: Facebook