Transcaucasia & Central Asia 2005

 

Transcaucasia consists of three republics: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, all of which have territorial disputes with each other. Armenia supports ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh (Azerbaijan) and has occupied militarily 16 percent of Azerbaijan since the early 1990s. Over 800,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis were driven from the occupied lands as well as from Armenia; in response, about 230,000 ethnic Armenians were deported from Azerbaijan to Armenia. Ethnic Armenian groups in the Javakheti region of Georgia seek greater autonomy. In addition, Georgia has a territorial conflict with Russia over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are ruled by governments supported by Russia but not recognized internationally.

All Transcaucasian republics have universal suffrage and are headed by a president, while legislative power is in the hands of national assemblies.

Central Asia consists of five republics: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. A 130 km border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan is the cause of serious disputes over enclaves and other areas.

All five states have universal suffrage and are headed by presidents and bicameral parliaments.

The level of antisemitism in the states of both Transcaucasia and Central Asia is very low.

 

Republic of Armenia

About 900 Jews live in Armenia (out of a population of 3.9 million, 94 percent of whom are Armenian Apostolic). The leading Jewish organization in the country is the Jewish Community of Yerevan. It operates Keshet − a children’s choir, a school for adults and an ulpan. The only active synagogue is in a private house in Yerevan. A small group of Subbotniks live in the town of Sevan. (The Subbotniks first appeared during the reign of Catherine II, toward the end of the eighteenth century. According to official reports of the Imperial Russian government, most of the sect’s followers performed a brit mila, believed in absolute monotheism rather than the Christian Trinity, accepted only the Jewish Bible, and observed the Sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday). The Yerevan State University has a department of Hebrew studies.

Antisemitic attitudes in Armenia originate in several theories, the most common being that Jews organized the genocide of Armenians by the Turks in 1915. In April 2005 the Armenian Center for Strategic and National Research conducted a poll on this issue. One thousand nine hundred people country-wide were asked who was to blame for the massacre: 13.5 percent answered that Russia was to blame, while 5.2 percent said the Jews were responsible.

On 21 January 2005 the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Yerevan opened a criminal case against Armen Avetisian, chairman of the small ultra-nationalist Union of the Armenian Aryans, for incitement of ethnic hatred, after he had made antisemitic statements (for example, that he would rid Armenia of Jews). He was arrested on 24 January. However, Avetisian has many supporters, including members of the Union of Writers, academics and politicians. On 28 January Viktor Dallakian and Manuk Gasparian from the Artarutiun bloc offered to pay his bail. On 17 March Avetisian pleaded not guilty, claiming that he was merely anti-Zionist. He received a three year suspended sentence.

The pseudo-historical belief that Armenians were originally Aryans who lived on the primordial territory of Armenia has gained popularity in the past 10-15 years, prompting a search for Aryan roots by an increasing number of Armenians. This has influenced both the level of antisemitism in the country and the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. In addition, one theory claims that the ancestral home of the Indo-European community lay in the Armenian uplands.

Cases of desecration of Jewish facilities are very rare in Armenia. On 11 February it was discovered that a Holocaust memorial in Yerevan had been overturned.

 

Republic of Uzbekistan

There are about 10,000 Jews in Uzbekistan, including 3,000 Bukharan Jews (out of approximately 27 million people, about 88 percent of whom are Sunni Muslims). Since becoming independent (1991), the country has maintained friendly relations with Israel and has permitted the free function of Jewish organizations: the Association of Jewish Communities of Uzbekistan, the Republican Jewish Cultural National Center and the World Congress of Bukharan Jews. The Jewish Agency and the Joint have been active in the country since 1993. The former has established a network of Jewish centers and youth clubs and the latter, a network of charity organizations (Kheseds). Jewish schools in Bukhara and Tashkent are supported by the Or Avner fund. These cities also have Jewish kindergartens. A Jewish college operates in Bukhara. The Bukharan Bulletin and a newspaper, Shofar, are published. There are ten active synagogues in the country. In 2003 the Public Jewish Museum of Uzbekistan was opened in Tashkent.

On 9 November, Alekseii Volosevich, correspondent of the Fergana online information agency, who wrote of the persecution of the opposition in the country, was seriously beaten near his home in Tashkent by five men. The text: “Here lives a bribable journalist, a Jew, who understands nothing about Islam" was painted on his door.

Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (see ASW 2003/4) is known for its antisemitic ideology and antisemitic propaganda. This organization, which is officially banned in the country, also believes there is a conspiracy between Zionism and the State of Israel. In a leaflet distributed in 2005 they accused President Islam Karimov of being a Jew and “the biggest enemy of the Muslim people,” and asked how long the authorities would remain silent about the crimes of the Jews.

Antisemites in Uzbekistan (not all of them Muslim) use the Internet to distribute their propaganda. For example, in June 2005 the tract “Karimov Tribe: Destroying Uzbekistan” was published on www.centrasia.ru, a directory of news and opinions on Central Asia that claims to be non-political and open to everyone. The author, Usman Khaknazarov, stated that the Jews had “the wrong information about their superiority. They consider other people to be their slaves… Jews are a people who follow an ideological program, based on Zionism (a chauvinistic and fascist ideology, that all people were created by God in order to serve Jews).”