Newsletter 16 - Friends House Moscow

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Friends ~~~~~ Moscow
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Issue
No. 16: with program notes for Nov 2003- April 2004
2004 FHM
Goveming Board:
Baltimore YM
Marsha
Holliday
Britaill YM
Eleanor Barden
Peter Dyson
Michael Eccles
Bonnie Gro~ahn
GemInI! YM
Anne Englehard
t
Japall YM
Taka Murakami
North West YM
Johan Maurer
Pacific YM
Julie Harlow
PIliiadelpllia
YM
Ed Sargent
NOl1llayYM
Erik Cleven
Kristin Eskeland
ex-officio
HollalldjFWCCjEMES
BronV\'YnHarwood
Staff
Galina Orlova
Sergei Grushko
IIItern
Mark McNeill
US Newsletter editOJ'
Julie Harlow
I[
Spring-summer
In Chechnya
2004
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Today
The June 2000 appointment
of the Chechen Akmad Kadyrov to
lead that republic was an effort to
pacify those opposed to Russian rule.
However, his subsequent election,
regarded
internationally
as
questionable at best, only increased
the view by some that he was a mere
puppet of the Kremlin. His
assassination on May 11 lias led to
fears of heavy handed retaliation and
the installation of someone even
worse.
Shortly after his election, he
"purged his inner circle of potential
.
rivals and put his son [Ramzan] in
charge of an armed force called the Chechen police, thus strengthening the clannish nature of the Chechen
government. [Ramzan] Kadyrov's undisciplined and violent army harassed, kidnapped and tortured fellow
Chechens suspected of collaboration with the fighters or those simply deemed disloyal." I
This Ramzan Kadyrov is the young man whom the Kremlin appointed first deputy prime minister
of Chechnya the day after his father's murder. He is only 27 therefore not eligible for the presidefu~y.
According to a May 12, 2004 editorial in the Moscow Times, "For this, Chechens can only be thankful.
Akhman Kadyrov. as odious as his regime was, was able to hold his own against both the rebels and
Moscow. But his thuggish and uneducated son, whose brutal security force has terrorized the civilian
population, would be an unmitigated disaster."
"The armed conflict in Chechnya, now in its fourth year, is the most serious human rights crisis of
the new decade in Europe. It has taken a disastrous toll on the civilian population and is now one of the
greatest threats to stability and rule of law in Russia. Yet the international community's response to it has
been shameful and shortsighted." So writes Rachel Denber in World Report 2004 from Human Rights
Watch.2
"The international community should take immediate action to address major human rights abuses
continuing in Chechnya and neighboring Ingushetia", Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the
Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and Memorial Human Rights Center said in a joint
statement released in Moscow on April 8, 2004. "Despite continuing violence in Chechnya, the federal and
Chechen authorities continue closing tent camps for the internally displaced persons in Ingushetia and
pressuring them to return to Chechnya. Accommodation and humanitarian assistance provided to Ingushetia
.
returneesin Chechnyadoesnot meet internationalstandards."
FHM Mission Statement
Friends House Moscow is an initiative of Friends worldwide
which seeks to encourage spiritual growth and the development
of a civil society based on mutual trust and community
cooperation. We aim to provide a stable and visible presence in
the face of rapidly changing conditions as we express the unique
faith and practice of the Religious Society of Friends. We put this
faith into action by working for social justice based on our
fundamental belief in the presence of
God in each individual.
.
"The government is using a mixed policy of
threats and incentives to get the displaced persons to
return. with blatant disregard for their well-founded fears
about security," said Anna Neistat, the Moscow
Director of Human Rights Watch.
An election to replace Akhman Kadyrov will
take place in September. Only time will tell if it leads to
improvements for the Chechen people.
I Masha Lipman, "Chechenization" is Failing,
Washington Post, May 12, 2004
2 Denber's detailed analysis is available at
http://hrw.org/wr2k4/7.htm# - Toc587 44956
The Oath hKhassan
A Surgeon
Baiev; Simon & Schuster (2003),
under Fire
Reviewed by Peter Jarman, April 2004
Khassan Baiev, a Chechen surgeon. poignantly describes in this
engaging book the fate of Chechen people including their resistanceand
suffering from Russian imperialism during and before the two civil wars in
Chechnya beginning in 1994. At this time Baiev was first drawn into his
heroic service of saving the lives of civilians and both Chechen and Russian
fighters, mainly in his native village of Alkhan Kala and in the neighbouring
but utterly ruined Chechen capital. Grozny; He remained faithful to a
doctor's Hippocratic Oath to render medical assistance to all who are in
need of it, without discriminating between Russian and Chechen fighters.
This placed his life in such jeopardy that he was nearly executed twice. as
each side assumed that he must be a traitor for healing fighters from the
opposite side. To save his life, and that of his family, eventually he was
spirited away to attain asylum in the USA.
His book reveals much of the life and culture of Chechens while
identifying both the good and the bad about the Chechens and Russians
caught up in the civil wars of 1994-6. and from 1999. For Friends interested
ih death defying surgical operations carried out with minimal equipment
whilst all around war is waging, this book contains a spellbinding account.
The fighting continues to flare up as is reported for example week by week
by Russian Quaker Sergei Nikitin who was on the staff of Friends House
Moscow, but who now runs the Amnesty International office in Moscow.
The Oath includes a harrowing 'account of the rounding up and
deportation of the entire Chechen nation to Kazakhstan in 1944 on the
orders of Stalin: a holocaust, a genocide. if ever there was one. that in some
respects continues as 1 write for there is yet to be peace and
justice in the Chechen republic.
Many Quakers working in this area confirm Baiev's accounts of conditions in Chechnya. Galina Orlova and Patricia Cockrell
in their work for Friends House Moscow have found ways of being alongside Chechens in their struggles through their association
with the Russian Soldiers' Mothers' organisation described in Baiev's book, and in other ways. Chris Hunter, a British Friend,
established with Patricia Cockrell the Centre for Peacemaking and Community Development registered in Chechnya. It has done
much especially to help young people traumatised by the civil wars there. Roswitha Jarman, another British Friend. has been working
as a counselling psychologist since 1995 with Luba Archakova of a Chechen organisation for rehabilitation and development that is
based in neighbouring Ingushetia. Luba is mentioned in Baiev's book. Roswitha can confirm the harrowing details of kidnapping,
killings by contract soldiers within the Russian forces. torture and other atrocities so vividly described in The Oath.
Baiev's book indicates why some Friends have sought to support the sorely oppressed Chechen people. most of whom are
moderate hospitable Muslims who long for a restoration of peace and justice in their small mountainous republic. The book also
serves to highlight the dilemma of Friends House Moscow in discerning how they should work for Chechens who are regarded by
many Russians including their President as.harbouring and encouraging terrorists. Against this woeful prejudice Christ can be heard
saying to Friends. 'I am on the side of the oppressed
FHM
-
whose side are you on?'
on the Internet at quaker.org/fhm
We have greatly improved our website and hope that you will visit us there. In addition to background information,
you will find the current newsletter and many back issues, too.
If you would prefer to read the newsletter online rather than receiving a hard copy in the mail,
please notify the editor at fhmus@aol.com
that you wish to be placed on an ..email notification list".
We will stop mailing you a newsletter. Instead, you will receive a brief message twice a year
indicating that the new issue is ready to read at our website
-2-
..
Where does your donation go?
I
The Friends House Moscow Board meets once a year to make general policy decisions, give program guidance, consider
staffing and space needs, and set the annual budget. Within this budget there are lines for specific costs related to staff employment,
housing and benefits as well as all the usual operating expenses. There is also a category for "projects". From this line we take the
support for the various projects that we sponsor during the year. In general this is how it breaks down for the -$59,000 budget for
2004.
.
Staff 32%
Direct Grants for Projects
46%
Operating Expenses 23%
The Executive Committee, a smaller group of Board members.plus the staff, meets 3 times a year. They make the more
hands-on decisions about use of time, resources and space. There are usually 2-3 times as many applications as we can gran( and the
Executive Committee must consider many factors in deciding which ones to support.
Following are very brief descriptions of 7projects that were approved
at the March 2004 meeting of the Ex Comm.
..
3. Peace to the Family: -$2,733
1. Quaker Literature II. -$318
To reduce repeat occurrences of violence in the family.
Social workers and lawyers will work with the
victims of domestic violence addressing the psychologi,£?l,
social and legal problems this violence causes. We will hold
thirty seminars on the prevention of violence. Individual
counselling will be offered to sixty victims of domestic
violence. Fifteen hours of group support sessions will be
held. Twelve volunteers will be taught how to run a group
support session. Work will also take place with seventy-five
perpetrators of domestic violence.
To scan and edit, making electronic copies of the following
Quaker literature in Russian:
A Testament of Devotion, Tomas R Kelly
Diary of John Woolman, John Woolman
Faith. and Practice: Quakers Way of Life, Mary
Moehlman
Friendly Bible Study, Joanne & Larry Spears
Lighting Candles In The Dark, stories
Quaker Spirituality, Douglas V Steere
The Prophetic Stream, William Taber
The Road to Non-Violence. Pat Patford
Participants in a previous A VP training
in Ingushetia refugee camp.
2. AVP Ingushetia
-$2.152
To hold five seminars in two months. AVP seminars have
made a good impression in Chechnya, Ingushetia and North
Osetia, areas of deep ethnic tension.
This group of
participants will be youths from the three republics, including
some directly from Chechnya.
The trainings will be held in Ingushetia and North
Osetia, necessitating travel and lodging expenses. The 75
participants are from sixteen to thirty years old, many of them
students. After holding the seminars we expect that the
youths will be more able to closely communicate among
themselves and to set up different youth activities and
cultural meetings in their home regions. .
-3-
6. Network of Information
Centres for Youths and
Bulletin on Alternatives to
Violence -$1,850
4.
Programme
of
psychological help at the
"Centre for the Adaptation
and Teaching of Child
Refugees
and
forced.
Migrant" (Civil Assistance) ,
-$2,571
To give assistanceto traumatised
,
.11
children and training to the il
volunteers that work with them.
We will bring two
psychologists to the centre to
organise individual psychological
sessions with the children most in
need of help. There will also be
training
sessions
with
the
psychologists with the aim of
increasing their qualifications,
consultations with the volunteers
working with traumatised children,
testing of the volunteers to
determine their ability to work with
children. and testing the children to
determine the level of development
of their cognitive processes.
Around
twenty
child
refugees and forced migrants and
the volunteers of the centre, around
thirty to fifty people, will be served.
One of the refugee children helped by an FHM
sponsored program in Moscow.
5. Human rights and military service
To create in Dzerzhinsk a network of
information centres for youths based
on the principles of self-organisation
and to distribute information about
alternatives to violence.
InfoITnation centres for
youths will be established in ten
schools in the city.
Monthly a
newsletter of limited circulation will
be distributed.
The youths
themselves
will organise
the
collection of information and the
publication of the newsletter. . At
least fifty secondary school pupils
will work through methods of
teaching which allow youths to learn
in a year practical applications of the
main
principles
of
working
independently, the basic principles of
journalism, and the basic skills of
networking. They will create a
bulletin 'Alternatives to Violence'
and develop methods of distribution
of two thousand copies each month.
At least four seminars on AVP will
be held for members of the
informational centres and those \V.no
wish to take part in the programme
after reading the bulletin.
- $1,016
To protect the rights of people due to be drafted and
conscripts already serving from Pskov region, Plyussa and
Strugi-krasniye areas - telTitory of the united regional
Military Commissariat {a draft commission}, which allows
considerable infringements to the conscripts' rights.
We will hold meetings with up to 210
young people in two areas of the Pskov region. Five
meetings will be held in villages and two in the regionis
centre. The meetings will take place in schools and libraries.
The aims of the meetings are to attract the youth's attention
to alternatives to military service and to demonstrate lawful
means to solve conflicts with the draft commission.
Participants will be from the countryside from
sixteen to eighteen years old (students at the rural educational
institute and rural technical school); the teachers at the rural
educational establishments, and libra'rians at the central
regional library and its rural counterparts.
The spreading of information about the rights of
conscripts and soldiers in service will make way for a
reduction in the number of unlawful conscriptions for
national service. The spreading of information about
alternatives to military service will help to set up an institute
for alternatives to military service in the Pskov region.
7. Translation of A Living Faith by Wilmer
Cooper ($850 from FHM*)
To provide in-depth information about Quakerism for
Russian speakers. There is no book now in Russian which
gives the views of modern Quakers as well as an historical
study of the development of Quaker thought.
Sergei
Grushko, FHM staff, will locate a translator and editor. The
project will be beneficial to Russian-speaking Friends and
those who wish to learn more about Quakerism.
(* FHM Board Clerk, Johan Maurer, will apply to
Quakers United in Publishing for another $850.)
note: FHM staff do not personally run each of these projects.
Theirjob is to support a network of communications between
individuals and organizations, solicit grant applications,
work with the applicants to complete the application process
successfully, translate the applications (submitted in Russian)
into English so that all FHM board members can read them,
circulate those.. applications. to the Board prior to the
Executive Committee meeting where they will be considered,
deliver funds to the selected projects, follow up with contacts
and visits to the programs funded, and collect and circulate
final reports and evaluation - in addition to their other duties.
-4-
The Constructive Spirit: Quakers in Revolutionary Russia
by David McFadden and Claire Garfinkel, with an overview by Sergei Nikitin
reviewed by Johan Maurer, clerk of the Friends House Moscow Board
Writing from Moscow to Quaker colleagues at home in the
disastrous winter of 1921, Anna 1. Haines specified what kind of
emergency relief workers were needed to cope with civil war, famine
and a paranoid Bolshevik government: "In general the people who
will be able to accomplish the most will be those who can win rather
than fight their way. One need not be a Communist, but one should
be capable of an open mind and a closed mouth. No one of the
dreamy parlor-Socialist type should be considered; sensation hunters
equallyundesirable "
.
With many such vivid archival excerpts, this fascinating
book illuminates an episode of Friends service that deserves to be far
better known. In two separate but related waves of involvement - for
a three-year period bracketing the revolutionary year of 1917...and
during the famine and reconstruction period of 1921-27 - teams of
British and American Friends operated food, clothing and medical
distribution networks in Moscow and in the famine-stricken Samara
region, a thousand miles to the east. At their peak, these activities
were keeping as many as 397,000 people alive in the area between
Samara and Orenburg, centering on the town of Buzuluk. Friends ran
a thousand feeding centers, a hospital, over 40 malaria clinics, and a
number of children's homes; they negotiated with their own
governments, with the shifting cast of Soviet bureaucrats, with local
officials; they taught tractor mechanics, bought and sold horses,
organized employment, and advocated passionately for Russian relief
among variously supportive and skeptical home-office Quaker
leaders, all in the service of (in the words of the AFSC's director,
Wilbur Thomas) "a Christian message of goodwilL."
A number of fascinating individuals come alive in the pages
of Constructive Spirit, particularly the imperious and irrepressible
Nancy Babb, a one-woman relief and development agency who
practically rebuilt the community infrastructure in a hard-hit district
of 43 villages and 63,000 people, and who "had a reputation,"
according to the authors, "of being hard to work with." Anna Haines,
the meticulous and thoughtful co-leader of Quaker relief activities in Russia, provides a study in contrast; thanks to her careful notes,
we learn much about the daily realities of the work, the persistent diplomacy required, and the visions of the field staff for their
ongoing work in Russia.
Some of the behind-the-scenes incidents in this b09k illustrate perennial dilemmas for emergency relief and development
work. The complicated personal relationship between American Friends Service Committee chairman Rufus Jones and American
Relief Administration director (and later U.S. president) Herbert Hoover affected more than one dilemma of the time. First of all,
Friends were properly concerned to remain clear of government entanglements. Secondly, in the USA, much of the financial support
for Russian relief came from leftist and progressive groups, while Hoover and many other leading Friends of the time had no
sympathy for such groups. And, thirdly, these complications in turn sometimes aggravated relationships between the British and
American service bodies. Constructive Spirit also details the lively discussions between those advocating concrete relief-oriented
services and those who advocated a more spiritually-oriented Quaker center or "Quaker Embassy" approach to the ministry of
presence.
Sergei Nikitin, formerly on the staff of Friends House Moscow, has written about Quaker service in post-revolutionary
Russia in Quaker Life (January-February 1998). He contributes a helpful introductory chapter to Constructive Spirit.
Ultimately, Quaker efforts to playa role in Russian reconstruction could not make a lasting transition from emergency
conditions to long-term ministry. Home-country Quaker politics (and perhaps a consequent failure of vision) and shifting policies in
the Soviet Union combined to bring even a nominal Friends international presence in Russia to an endby 1931, not to be revived on
an ongoing basis until the establishment of Friends House Moscow only a decade ago.
.
Intentional Productions, PO Box 94814, Pasadena CA 91109
232 pages with 35 original photographs ISBN 0-0648042-5-5
$16.95 plus $1.60 shipping for thefirst copy and $0.50 for each additional copy. Cal[(orniaResidents add $1.40 sales tax per copy.
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8
clo Julie Harlow
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Support Association
clo Julie Harlow
1163 Auburn Dr.
Davis, CA 95616
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Issue #16
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includes flyer to post