RUSSIA: "How can a
believer light a match to destroy holy books?"
By Felix Corley, Forum 18
10 October 2011
Russian prosecutors are
seeking to have the Russian translation of the most important work for Hare
Krishna devotees – the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is - banned. "They are trying
not just to declare our book extremist, but our religious teaching also. If
they succeed, our community throughout Russia could be declared extremist",
the community's lawyer Mikhail Frolov told Forum 18 News Service. Prosecution
"expert analyses" have been severely criticised. Meanwhile, an appeal
court in Dagestan has ruled that works by the Muslim theologian Said Nursi
should be handed to the Dagestan Muslim Board "for a decision on the
question of the destruction of the banned books and pamphlets". Forum 18
notes that Russian law bans handing over state functions – such as this
decision - to religious organisations. Dagestan's Muslim Board told Forum 18
they have not been given the books, and would not destroy them on state orders.
Mikhail Odintsov of the office of Russia's Human Rights Ombudsperson described
the decision to Forum 18 as "incomprehensible", asking: "How can
a believer light a match to destroy holy books?" Book confiscations and
destructions have taken place in relation to both Nursi's works and Jehovah's
Witness literature.
Prosecutors in Tomsk are
seeking through the courts to have the Russian translation of the most
important work for Hare Krishna devotees – the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is -
declared "extremist" and placed on the Federal List of Extremist
Materials. "This case is more than important for us - it is vital,"
Hare Krishna lawyer Mikhail Frolov told Forum 18 News Service from Moscow on 4
October. "This is the most important development in the whole history of
our movement in Russia. They are trying not just to declare our book extremist,
but our religious teaching also. If they succeed, our community throughout Russia
could be declared extremist."
Tomsk Prosecutor and FSB
against Hare Krishna community
Viktor Fedotov, Tomsk's
Prosecutor, asked the city's Lenin District Court to rule the third Russian
edition of the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is extremist. The book is a Russian edition
of a translation by Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for
Krishna Consciousness. An "expert analysis" completed in October 2010
by three academics at Tomsk State University – Sergei Avanesov, Valeri
Svistunov and Valeri Naumov - found that the book "contains signs of
incitement of religious hatred and humiliation of an individual based on
gender, race, ethnicity, language, origin or attitude to religion", he
said. The analysis claimed the book humiliated those who did not believe in or
even know about Krishna or follow Krishna's teachings. It claimed that the
author propagated the exclusivity and superiority of his faith and was hostile,
insulting and humiliating about other faiths. It also claimed that the author
called for hostile or violent acts against women and non-Hare Krishna devotees.
[For an analysis of the
problematic nature of the concept of "the incitement of hatred [nenavist]
or enmity [vrazhda], as well as the humiliation of an individual or group of
persons on the basis of .. attitude to religion", and other problems with
Russian anti-extremism legislation, see a personal commentary by Alexander
Verkhovsky of the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis at F18News 19 July
2010 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1468.)].
Tomsk Prosecutor Fedotov
argued that the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is was therefore extremist under Article 1
of the 2002 Extremism Law. Article 13 of the same Law bans the distribution or
storage for the purposes of distribution of such extremist works. He cited a 24
June report by Tomsk regional FSB security service that it had obtained the
Bhagavad-Gita As it Is at the Saraswati Indian shop in Tomsk. Fedotov also
asked the court to send its ruling that the book is extremist to the federal
authorities in Moscow, so that it could be included in the Federal List of
Extremist Materials and banned throughout Russia.
Tomsk Prosecutor's Office
refused to put Forum 18 through to Prosecutor Fedotov. Marina Osipova, the
official who prepared the 30 June letter, refused to tell Forum 18 on 24 August
who had initiated the action against the city's Hare Krishna community and the
Bhagavad-Gita As it Is or why. "There is a special procedure for answering
questions," she told Forum 18 and put the phone down.
An officer of the Tomsk FSB,
who would not give his name, insisted the same day that it could not comment
while the case was in the courts. However, he claimed that the FSB security
service had played "no role" in the case and merely "carried out
the instructions given by the Prosecutor's Office".
Attempts to ban book
"absurd"
Nelli Krechetova, the Tomsk
Region Ombudsperson for Human Rights, described attempts to ban the
Bhagavad-Gita As it Is as "absurd", the local media reported on 3
October. She warned that "the possible ban on the book, and, therefore,
the ban on the religious activity of its followers, violates the constitutional
rights of the citizen to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and freedom
of speech." She called for the legal case to be reconsidered.
As the court case was
underway, Swami Prabhupada's edition of the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is gained
praise from the Indian Ambassador to Russia, Ajai Malhotra. In a recording on
YouTube he said: "The translation by Swami Prabhupada is I believe one of
the best that you can find," he told a celebration of the festival of
Krishna Janmashtami in Moscow on 21 August. "The reason is because he
gives you the words, their meanings and the options to understand it
[Bhagavad-Gita] as it was written, not through any intermediary."
In June, Russia's Supreme
Court made clear that cases under "extremism"-related Articles of the
Criminal Code should be very carefully and narrowly framed. But this has not
stopped the Tomsk case, or similar cases against Muslim readers of Nursi's
works and Jehovah's Witnesses (see F18News 19 July 2011
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1594).
Case begins
At Lenin District Court, the
case was handed to Judge Galina Butenko, the court website notes. Four hearings
took place between 12 and 30 August, when the case was suspended. As the case
began, human rights defenders picketed the court, with posters quoting the
rights to religious freedom and freedom of speech in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and the Russian Constitution.
Also displayed were quotations
from the 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 by the writer Ray Bradbury, which envisages
a future where all books are burnt and those who possess them punished. One
poster quoted an exchange from the novel between a woman and her neighbour, a
fireman who burns books: "'Do you ever read any of the books you burn?' He
laughed. 'That's against the law!'"
During the hearings the three
compilers of the "expert analysis" were questioned. On 18 August,
Avanesov admitted in court that the FSB security service had asked him to
conduct the analysis in 2010, long before the case reached court. In response
to a question from the judge, he acknowledged that he sees no direct incitement
to discord in the book. He claimed that some people – though not himself -
could be offended by the use of the word "pigs". The judge then
pointed out that the Bible uses the same word in the saying "do not cast
pearls before swine" (St Matthew 7,6).
Svistunov also stated in court
that the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is contains no hostile comments about other
faiths. He said the book supports the exclusivity of the faith, but added that
this is the same for any faith.
Among other assessments, the
defence presented a 2004 analysis by Professor Boris Falikov, of the Russian
State Humanitarian University's Centre of Comparative Religions (who is Russian
Orthodox), which noted that: "Prabhupada's books do not express any
negative views or positions in relation to any ethnic, racial, national or
religious groups". However, the court refused to accept the analysis
because it did not specify which edition of the book it analysed.
In the evening of 30 August,
Judge Butenko agreed to the Prosecutor's request to order a further
"psychological/religious studies/linguistic expert analysis" of the
Bhagavad-Gita As it Is, this time by three academics at Kemerovo State
University. The three academics are Aleksey Gorbatov (religious studies),
Mikhail Osadchy (linguist) and Sergei Dranishnikov (psychologist). The instructions
to the experts drawn up by the Prosecutor's Office include the formulation
"manipulation of consciousness".
The book's publishers in
Russia, the Hare Krishna-run Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, appealed against the
judge's decision to send the book for further analysis. However, on 30
September Tomsk Regional Court rejected their suit. This allowed the Lenin
District Court to request the expert analysis on 3 October, to be submitted by
1 December.
Concern over
"experts"
The Hare Krishna community has
expressed concern over the choice of "experts", pointing out that
Gorbatov is not an expert in Hinduism and that his main publications have been
on the history of Christianity in Siberia. They are also concerned at another
of the three new "experts", Osadchy, as he was one of three Kemerovo
State University "experts" who found that Jehovah's Witness
literature was "extremist".
Will new assessment be
accurate?
Some doubt that the second
analysis of the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is will be more accurate than the first.
"The defence succeeded in completely rejecting the conclusions of the
'expert analysis'," Nikolai Karpitsky, a philosophy lecturer at Siberian
State Medical University, told Forum 18 from Tomsk on 4 October. Karpitsky, who
is Russian Orthodox, attended court hearings as an expert for the defence.
"The court had two choices: to agree that no reason exists to consider the
Bhagavad-Gita As it Is extremist, or to decide that the court didn't have
enough evidence to make a decision. The court chose the second option."
Kemerovo State University is
"practically the only place where the Prosecutor's Office analysis that a
book is extremist would be confirmed", Karpitsky told Forum 18.
"That's why the court rejected the defence's suggestions of possible experts
in Moscow or Yekaterinburg. I think all the mistakes of the first 'expert
analysis' will be removed this time round, making it much harder to challenge
the new 'expert analysis' in court."
"I can't be an expert on
every single faith"
Gorbatov, one of the newly-appointed
"experts", told Forum 18 from Kemerovo on 5 October that he had not
yet had any official document about the analysis. He said he did not know if he
would be paid for it, though he told Forum 18 its question about payment was "not
appropriate".
Gorbatov told Forum 18 that he
did not know why the court had chosen him, but that his dissertation had been
on relations between the state and religious communities. Asked if he has a
special knowledge of Hinduism, he responded: "I am a religious studies
expert, but I can't be an expert on every single faith."
Gorbatov told Forum 18 he is
not personally a religious believer, but is positive to all faiths. He defended
his colleague Osadchy's contribution to the "expert analysis" on
Jehovah's Witness literature. "He was one of those who judged my
dissertation." He said he was aware of criticism of the analysis Osadchy
contributed to, including from Odintsov of the Human Rights Ombudsperson's
office. "He is entitled to his views. But Jehovah's Witnesses are a
problem all over the world." He declined to explain what he meant by
"problem".
Asked whether he believes it
is right that the state carries out "expert analyses" of religious
texts, Gorbatov responded: "All states do this." Asked to name some,
he responded: "France and Germany."
