Russia claims xenophobia is growing in Poland

photo - tomskydive/sxc.hu/cc

Drawing on information from the Polish Nigdy Wiecej (Never Again) anti-racist organization, the report, released by the Kremlin in December, claims that in the years 2011 and 2012, 600 nationalist hate crimes were committed in Poland.

The report, published a month after a security cabin was burnt outside the Russian Embassy in Warsaw during a nationalist Independence Day march on 11 November, claims the cities of Bialystok in the north-east and Wroclaw in the south west are hotbeds of nationalist activity in Poland.

For proof of a growing nationalist trend in the country, the Russian Foreign Ministry points to the far-right Nationalist Movement (Ruch Narodowy) having 20,000 followers on its Facebook page, whereas, the report notes, Poland's ruling Civic Platform party has only 40,000.

'Queers'

In the wake of international human rights groups calling for a boycott of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games next month in protest against what they claim is state-sponsored homophobia in Russia, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow's report lambasts the EU for "promoting an alien view of homosexuality and same-sex marriages as a norm of life.”

The English language version of the Russian human rights report on the EU raised eyebrows, however, when, the RIA Novosti news agency reported, the term for gays in the original Russian language version - "нетрадиционной ориентацией", which literally means those of an unconventional or nontraditional orientation - was translated as the highly derogatory term "queers".

The report is the second by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which has established a new Human Rights Ombudsman to monitor the situation internationally. (pg)

source: IAR