slackbastard

Bigotry Monitor: Volume 8, Number 47
December 5, 2008

“A Weekly Human Rights Newsletter on Antisemitism, Xenophobia, and Religious Persecution in the Former Communist World and Western Europe.”

Edited by Charles Fenyvesi // Published by UCSJ: Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union

Rising hostility to migrants, crimes by migrants and against them, and far-right xenophobic activism spilling over to antisemitism are the trends pointing to a new, potentially unstable period ahead for Russia.

1. INTERIOR MINISTRY: EXTREMIST CRIMES IN RUSSIA TRIPLED IN FOUR YEARS.
2. RACIST VIOLENCE CLAIMED 18 VICTIMS IN NOVEMBER. A different summary of extremist violence was presented by a nongovernmental organization that tracks hate crimes in Russia. The Sova Center for Information and Analysis reported on December 1 that in the month of November, up to 18 people became victims of racist and neo-Nazi violence, including three fatalities. Besides Moscow, the crimes were reported in St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Penza, and Kaliningrad.
3. ANTI-MIGRANT MARCH TURNS ANTISEMITIC.
4. PUTIN: GLOBAL CRISIS AFFECTS RUSSIAN ECONOMY MINIMALLY.

5. NEO-NAZIS ATTACK MINORITY STUDENTS, THEN POLICE BEAT THE STUDENTS.
6. THREE NEO-NAZIS ATTACK JEWISH MUSICIAN.
7. AZERI REFUGEE BEATEN IN MOSCOW.
8. NEO-NAZIS STAB AZERI IN NIZHNY NOVGOROD.
9. ANTI-FASCIST STABBED IN IZHEVSK. An anti-fascist activist was hospitalized with stab wounds after a brawl with neo-Nazis in an Izhevsk, Russia (Republic of Udmurtiya) concert hall, according to a December 3 report by the Regions.ru news web site. The 20-year-old victim, identified only as Dmitry S., was stabbed on November 29, spent two days in the emergency room, and is now in stable condition. Security guards detained several neo-Nazis and turned them over to police who are currently deciding how to charge the suspects.
10. MOSCOW COURT FINDS 7 BONEHEADS GUILTY OF 20 KILLINGS.
11. EXTREMIST WEEKLY TO SHUT DOWN.
12. STONES THROWN AT UKRAINIAN SYNAGOGUE’S WINDOWS.
13. TURKMEN POLICE THREATEN INCARCERATION AND RAPE.
14. KAZAKHSTAN: RESTRICTIVE LAW ON RELIGION GOES TO PRESIDENT.

“As I stated on the Bombshell forum Andy, you are a liar, a hypocrite and no better than the trash that you fight against.” ~ Dion, December 2007
“No offence but honestly who gives a shit about some skinhead in Russia.” Nowave, Melbourne Punx Forum, October 2008
“Why are people so unkind?” ~ Kamahl, May 1978

Burnout: Vinlanders Social Club on the Decline
David Holthouse and Laurie Wood
Intelligence Report
Winter 2008

Indianapolis, Ind. — It was judgment day for the Butcher.

Wearing a blood-red prisoner’s jumpsuit, the co-founder of the Vinlanders Social Club, a once-mighty racist skinhead gang, sat in silence at a sentencing hearing while his attorney listed the jailhouse self-improvement courses that had been completed this year by Eric “The Butcher” Fairburn.

“Impulse control,” the lawyer said. “Anger management. Coping skills. Values clarification.”

That’s quite a turnaround for Fairburn, 34, who’s better known for specializing in drunkenness, self-aggrandizement, racial hatred and spontaneous violence. It was the latter tendency that landed him in a Marion County Superior Court room last August for sentencing after Fairburn pleaded guilty to felony battery for beating a black homeless man unconscious on a busy street in downtown Indianapolis.

It happened the night of March 26, 2007. Fairburn was drinking on the patio of an Irish pub along with two other Vinlanders, Tim Dumas and Josh Kern. They could have been toasting their gang’s success. At the time, the Vinlanders Social Club (VSC) was riding high…

“As I stated on the Bombshell forum Andy, you are a liar, a hypocrite and no better than the trash that you fight against.” ~ Dion, December, 2007
“Anarchy is a fag. Thanx to the people who have supported us… and to the random people letting us know about this anarchist knobjockey Mr Moran.” ~ Chunga (The Worst), September 2007

Neo-Nazi beliefs blamed for murders
The Dominion Post
December 5, 2008

A South Korean mother lamented the loss of her “perfect son” as two-time killer Hayden Brent McKenzie was sentenced today to at least another 21 years in jail for the slaying of backpacker Jae Hyeon Kim.

McKenzie’s name suppression was lifted today, meaning it can now be revealed he is already in jail for the 1999 murder of a gay Westport man.

Justice Simon France said in the High Court at Wellington today that both killings were the result of McKenzie’s “abhorrent” white supremacist neo-Nazi “hatreds”, with the first victim being homosexual and Mr Kim being Asian.

McKenzie pleaded guilty on the second day of a depositions hearing in Greymouth in October.

This afternoon, Justice France sentenced him to life in prison, to serve at least 21 years.

McKenzie’s name suppression was lifted today, but Justice France made an order preventing publication of images of McKenzie or any description of his appearance.

McKenzie looked around the court, appearing unconcerned as Mr Kim’s mother broke down reading a statement about the effect the death of her son had on her.

Leebun Kim, 60, read victim impact statements from herself and her husband, which were translated in the court.

Breaking into tears and slamming the desk with her grief, she detailed the grief and pain the family had been through in not knowing where their son was, and to find out he had been murdered in a far away country.

“You heartless and cruel man, why did you kill such a precious life?”

She described Mr Kim as “a perfect son” who worked and studied hard and of whom the family was extremely proud.

The family had lived five years of pain without knowing of his fate.

Mr Kim had left home in February 2003 and they had been in constant touch with him until he disappeared in September that year.

The economics student is believed to have been killed on the West Coast between September 29 and October 22, 2003.

He had come to New Zealand to study and improve his English

Another man allegedly involved in the crime gave police the approximate position of the body and McKenzie led police to it recently. Mr Kim’s clothing and possessions had been burned.

Four years earlier, in October 1999, West Coast eccentric and McKenzie family friend James “Janis” Bambrough, disappeared.

McKenzie and another man were convicted of murdering Bambrough. The body was found years later.

McKenzie has already served four years of the 10-year minimum imposed for that killing.

McKenzie’s lawyer, Greg King, argued that if McKenzie were sentenced for 25 years it would be too much for two murders.

It was a senseless and needless death of a thoroughly decent young man.

“His death was random and he did nothing to provoke it.

“The ripples of his demise have travelled most forcefully to the other side of the globe, it has also been felt by New Zealand and New Zealanders. We are a nation that prides itself on how we welcome visitors.”

McKenzie had led police to the exact location of Mr Kim’s body after earlier evidence, Mr King said.

He had pleaded guilty at an early preliminary hearing and it may be that others may yet enter guilty pleas, he said.

If McKenzie had not helped police it was likely Mr Kim’s remains might never have been found. Mr King said McKenzie had led police to the body in Mr Bambrough’s case also.

McKenzie had shown genuine remorse, genuine cooperation and a genuine change of attitude and his physical involvement in both murders was a matter for debate, he said.

Justice France said McKenzie had been associated with a white supremacist group at the time of both killings, although in 2004 he had married and moved away from the lifestyle.

Two other people are still to face the courts over Mr Kim’s death.

Nelson fisherman Shannon Flewellen [below] will defend a murder charge in Greymouth in June next year. A second man, whose name and the nature of the charge he faces are suppressed, will also be on trial.

– with NZPA

OMG that is so funny! Ha ha ha!

NB. McKenzie was a member of a bonehead gang calling themselves the Fourth Reich. (Leighton Wilding, currently imprisoned for the murder of James John (Janis) Bamborough in 1999 — the “gay Westport man” referred to in the above article — was another founding member.) “McKenzie, 28, was a white supremacist who infamously had Die Nigger Die tattooed on his forehead… The Fourth Reich was not so much born as ripped from the womb. Boneheads uniting in petty crime, drugs and a whole lot of empty posturing was nothing new. But this was something else. Formed in 1994 in Paparua Prison, near Christchurch, the Fourth Reich quickly became the most fearsome force in the South Island underworld. “They love to hate,” one police source says. “Hate’s a big part of their whole philosophy. They’re angry men.” Men capable of stomach-churning violence. Victims were shot, stabbed, menaced and bashed as up to two dozen Reich followers went on the rampage through the mid to late-1990s” (Reign of the Fourth Reich, Matt Conway, The Press, June 25, 2005).

See also : Ku Klux Kiwis, Michael Shannon, Review 23.1, February 1–February 17, 1998 | Pride, Strength & Honour : Kiwi bonehead on trial for murder (October 16, 2008) | White nightmares (June 17, 2008)

Nazis suspected of political arson attacks
The Local
December 4, 2008

Police suspect Swedish neo-Nazi groups of burning down a Stockholm cultural centre and setting fire to an apartment occupied by a young family in two separate arson attacks in the last week.

In both cases, the perpetrators are thought to have deliberately targeted people affiliated with the Syndikalist trade union.

On Saturday evening, the Cyklopen social centre in the Högdalen suburb burned to the ground in what police believe was a deliberate attack. The fire broke out at the same time an anti-racist group was scheduled to meet at the centre, though the meeting had been cancelled a few days earlier.

Two nights later, a couple and their young child were forced to evacuate their Högdalen apartment after flammable liquid was poured through their letterbox and the premises set on fire, Dagens Nyheter reports.

The father, 27, and mother, 24, fled to the balcony as the apartment became engulfed in flames. They managed to pass their 2-year-old daughter down to their neighbour one floor below before hoisting themselves over over the balcony to safety.

“We are working on the theory that Nazis were behind this,” police investigator Christer Söderheim told the newspaper.

With both parents active in the Syndikalist movement, Söderheim said he believed the two recent attacks were linked.

The events of the last few days come nine years after Syndikalist Björn Söderberg was murdered by two Nazis outside his front door in the Stockholm suburb Sätra.

Swedish security police Säpo said it was not unusual for clashes to intensify in the period leading up to December 6th, when Swedish neo-Nazis stage an annual march in the small town of Salem to mark the violent death in 2001 of 17-year-old white power advocate Daniel Wretström.

Daniel Wretström (1993–2000), bonehead and member of nutzi band Vit Legion (White Legion):

In December 2000, 17-year-old bonehead Daniel Wretström was beaten to death by a youth gang of mixed Swedish and immigrant origins in Salem, south Stockholm. He has since become a neo-Nazi martyr and the most important rallying point for neo-Nazis and the extreme right in Sweden. Shortly after his murder, more than 1,000 neo-Nazis held a torchlight meeting at the scene of the killing, the largest Nazi demonstration in Sweden since the 1940s. Again in December 2001, on the anniversary of Wretström’s death, Nazis of all stripes gathered at the scene. Both events were organized by Robert Vesterlund. In 2001 Vesterlund was arrested on illegal arms charges, and sentenced to one year in prison. He was due to begin his sentence in the course of 2002…

The Salem Fund, set up by the Nazi prison organization Yellow Cross, together with Info-14 and Blood & Honour for organizing the annual commemoration, is supported by the entire fascist [‘nationalist’] spectrum, except the Sweden Democrats. There was a decline in the number of participants, from 2000 in 2003 to 1,400 in 2004…

[2004] …the main Swedish nazi event of the year, the Salem march in south Stockholm on 6 December… has now surpassed the 30 November King Karl XII commemoration, as the most important annual gathering… Officially, the Salem rally is organised as a “protest against immigrant violence against Swedes” by the Salem Fund, a front for Robert Vesterlund’s Info-14, but, in reality, it is a joint enterprise by the National Democrats, the National Socialist Front, Swedish Resistance and Blood & Honour. The event has rapidly grown in importance and is today an event that paralyses the small municipality of Salem for a whole day each year…

In summary, the numbers of those commemorating the murder of Daniel Wretström seems to have gone up and down over the last seven years, as have the number of those protesting against the nazi march. What does not appear to have changed greatly is the massive and overwhelming police presence guarding the march and attempting to keep the two sides separate.

It will be interesting to see if the recent arsons and attempted murders make any difference to the outcome of this year’s event.

Nowave: “No offence but honestly who gives a shit about some skinhead in Russia / Korean backpacker in New Zealand / syndicalist in Sweden.”
Fruitsalad: “If Russians / Kiwis / Swedes are so interesting to you, move to Russia / New Zealand / Sweden.”
~ Melbourne Punx Forum, October 2008

“As I stated on the Bombshell forum Andy, you are a liar, a hypocrite and no better than the trash that you fight against.” ~ Dion, December, 2007
“Anarchy is a fag. Thanx to the people who have supported us… and to the random people letting us know about this anarchist knobjockey Mr Moran.” ~ Chunga (The Worst), September 2007

Last Saturday, November 30, nazis firebombed the Cyclops, an autonomous social centre in southern Stockholm. Two days later, on December 1, the build up of nazi activity in Stockholm took another violent turn as nazis poured gasoline through a mail slot and into the apartment housinga young couple and their child, before setting the oil and the apartament on fire. The couple are active in the ‘Central Organization of the Workers of Sweden’ (Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation or SAC), a syndicalist union. Thankfully, all three survived.

The SAC has release the following statement:

Nazis try to kill union activists and their child

In 1999, nazis murdered the Syndicalist Björn Söderberg. Now they’ve tried again. Two Syndicalists from Stockholm – one of them the former chair of the Stockholm chapter of the Syndicalist Union – and their two year old daughter were forced to climb down from the balcony of their third floor apartment when Nazis sat fire to their flat.

Half a year ago, our union members were exposed on the nazi webpage info-14. The nazis behind info-14 are the same people who arrange the annual nazi march in Salem.

Just before nine p.m. on Monday night, 1st December 2008, our members heard a splashing sound coming from the hallway. “I saw someone pour a clear fluid through the mail slot and understood from the scent that it was gasoline”, one of them says. “I shouted so loud that they can’t have missed it: ‘We have children in here!’ Only seconds later they lit the fire.”

In the hall hung the family’s winter clothes and in a couple of seconds the fire had spread to the kitchen and the living room. To exit through the front door was impossible.

“We had to lower our daughter down to the neighbours’ balcony one floor below”, our member explains. “We live on the top floor. Had she slipped out of our hands, she would have died.” The couple then climbed down the same way. Behind them the fire ravaged all their belongings, memories and future plans.

Our members and their daughter miraculously remained unharmed, but it doesn’t change the fact that one, or several, people deliberately and in cold blood tried to take their lives. Six months ago the openly nazi Info14 website published the names and pictures of our members. The police are working from the theory that the cowardly act was politically motivated, performed by the same offenders who two days earlier burnt down the libertarian socialist cultural centre The Cyclops in Högdalen. The case is classified as arson.

Our targeted members’ union work focused on anti-racism and diminishing class divides. Because of such ‘crimes’ they were to be punished with death according to the nazis.

The nazis behind info-14 are the same people who run the organisation Salemfonden, that every year on the first Saturday in December arrange the biggest Nazi march in northern Europe. “The people arranging the Salem march are not harmless individuals with a slightly dissenting opinion. They are ideologically convinced nazis, evidently capable of murder in the pursuit of their cause”, Ola Brunnström from SAC’s working committee states.

This Saturday the people who tried to kill our members have arranged a march in Salem, a suburb of Stockholm. SAC, the syndicalists, urges everyone to join in the counter demonstration organised by the Network Against Racism at 12 o’ clock in Salem Centre.

If we let the Nazis stand unchallenged we never now who they’ll attack next.

On the murder of Björn Söderberg, October 12, 1999:

The murder of the union activist Björn Söderberg has direct connections to the criminal and violent organised Swedish fascist movement. This past summer, Björn Söderberg worked at the warehouse of Svanströms in southern Stockholm. The nazi activist Rober Vesterlund also worked there. Despite this, Vesturlund was elected as the local unions’ shop steward. Björn Söderberg then did what any citizen with civil courage would have done — he reacted. When Björn made Vesterlund’s nazi sympathies known to the press, the central committee of the local union, Handels, decided to expel Vesterlund from the union: Vesterlund voluntarily left the union before he could be expelled.

The same day that Vesterlund’s nazi sympathies were made public, Björn Söderberg’s passport photo was sent to the nazi magazine info-14’s post box. The publisher of info-14 is Robert Vesterlund. Four weeks later, Björn Söderberg was assassinated. Three fascists were arrested and charged with the crime: all three had direct connections with Vesterlund.

The assassination of Björn Söderberg must be placed in perspective, one which encompasses an increase in nazi violence in that period, both in Sweden and internationally. In Sweden, this encompasses the assassination of two policemen in Malexander in May, and the car bombing of two anti-fascist journalists in Nacka in June. All of the available evidence points towards a group of criminal fascists who are well organised and who do not hesitate in executing violent deeds against those who oppose them. This is why the assassination of Björn Söderberg is not only an act of violence aimed at SAC or the workers’ movement, but one aimed at democracy’s core ideal, that of civic courage.

For the record, in December last year, Doug Smith of local band Bulldog Spirit published what he alleged was my workplace address on the online ‘punk’ forum Bombshell. At the same time, I received a number of death threats. Doug also plays in local band Marching Orders; Marching Orders are scheduled to play the Rebellion ‘punk’ Festival in August 2009, along with a number of ‘anti-fascist’ and ‘anti-racist’ bands.

There’s no business like punk business!