Window on Eurasia: Muslims Now Form One-Third of All Russian Political Prisoners

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, November 3 – Muslims now make up one-third of Memorial’s list of political prisoners in the Russian Federation, an increase and a presence that are all the more impressive because Memorial does not count as a political prisoner anyone convicted of violent actions as many Muslims in the Russian Federation have been.

 

            Fifteen of the 46 political prisoners on Memorial’s list are Muslims from the North Caucasus or other regions of the Russian Federation, up from four out of 71 from last year, according to Badma Byurichev of Kavpolit.com and points to the emergence of “a new political force” (kavpolit.com/articles/musulmanskij_aktsent_rossijskogo_inakomyslija-10884/).

 

The decline in the total number of political prisoners in Russia as identified by Memorial reflects the release of 30 Arctic Sunrise environmental activists, the amnesty extended to Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, and ten more who were released on the occasion at the end of their sentences.

 

Over the same period, according to Memorial, 24 new names were added to this list, including civic activists from the North Caucasus and members of Islamic organizations banned in the Russian Federation and boosted the number of Muslims among Russia’s political prisoners, Byurichev says. Nine of the 15 “Muslim” activists are members of Hizb-ut Tahrir.

 

 As he points out, Memorial has stricter rules for identifying someone as a political prisoner. Other groups have loser definitions and suggest there are far more than does the human rights group. At the same time, Memorial concedes that its list is not exhaustive and may in some cases be “only the tip of the iceberg.”

 

At least in part, Byurichev continues, the increase in the number of Muslims among Russia’s political prisoners reflects the fact that “the state sees in Islamic organizations serious competitors in the political field” and wants to dissuade other Muslims from following their lead and joining together.

 

“But judging from everything,” the Kavpolit analyst says, “the political reality is all the same changing,” and thus it is “no accident” that experts writing about the North Caucasus in particular have introduced new terms in their works such as “religious dissidents” in the case of Irina Starodubrovskaya and “civic Islam” in that of Denis Sokolov.

 

            Several other factors are at work here as well, Byurichev says. On the one hand, the Russian government which itself is using “pseudo-religious rhetoric” for its own political ends is more conscious of the ways in which others, including Muslims, may do the same and is responding accordingly by arresting activists who have committed no crimes.

 

            And on the other, given both the relatively small numbers of people on this list, the rise in the number of Muslims on it may be less indicative of a trend toward a religiously based political opposition than a product of the way such lists are compiled, even though with the new larger numbers Russia’s Muslims are likely to become more sensitive to what Moscow is doing.