Bhagavad Gita trial in Russia
Jan. 14th, 2012 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karpitskyBhagavad Gita trial in Russia
Summary of articles by Felix Corley, Forum 18 News Service http://www.forum18.org
Viktor Fedotov, Tomsk's Prosecutor, asked the city's Lenin District Court to rule the third Russian edition of the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is extremist. The book is a Russian edition of a translation by Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. An "expert analysis" completed in October 2010 by three academics at Tomsk State University – Sergei Avanesov, Valeri Svistunov and Valeri Naumov at the request of FSB security service officer Dmitry Velikotsky found that the book "contains signs of incitement of religious hatred and humiliation of an individual based on gender, race, ethnicity, language, origin or attitude to religion", he said. The analysis claimed the book humiliated those who did not believe in or even know about Krishna or follow Krishna's teachings. It claimed that the author propagated the exclusivity and superiority of his faith and was hostile, insulting and humiliating about other faiths. It also claimed that the author called for hostile or violent acts against women and non-Hare Krishna devotees.
Tomsk Prosecutor Fedotov argued that the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is was therefore extremist under Article 1 of the 2002 Extremism Law. Article 13 of the same Law bans the distribution or storage for the purposes of distribution of such extremist works. He cited a 24 June report by Tomsk regional FSB security service that it had obtained the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is at the Saraswati Indian shop in Tomsk. Fedotov also asked the court to send its ruling that the book is extremist to the federal authorities in Moscow, so that it could be included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials and banned throughout Russia.
Fedotov, Tomsk's Prosecutor, asked Lenin District Court to find the book extremist and send its ruling to the federal authorities in Moscow, so that it could be included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials and banned throughout Russia.
Prosecutors in Tomsk are seeking through the courts to have the Russian translation of the most important work for Hare Krishna devotees – the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is - declared "extremist" and placed on the Federal List of Extremist Materials. "This case is more than important for us - it is vital," Hare Krishna lawyer Mikhail Frolov told Forum 18 News Service from Moscow on 4 October. "This is the most important development in the whole history of our movement in Russia. They are trying not just to declare our book extremist, but our religious teaching also. If they succeed, our community throughout Russia could be declared extremist."
At Lenin District Court, the case was handed to Judge Galina Butenko, the court website notes. Four hearings took place between 12 and 30 August, when the case was suspended. As the case began, human rights defenders picketed the court, with posters quoting the rights to religious freedom and freedom of speech in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Russian Constitution.
Also displayed were quotations from the 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 by the writer Ray Bradbury, which envisages a future where all books are burnt and those who possess them punished. One poster quoted an exchange from the novel between a woman and her neighbour, a fireman who burns books: "'Do you ever read any of the books you burn?' He laughed. 'That's against the law!'"
During the hearings the three compilers of the "expert analysis" were questioned. On 18 August, Avanesov admitted in court that the FSB security service had asked him to conduct the analysis in 2010, long before the case reached court. In response to a question from the judge, he acknowledged that he sees no direct incitement to discord in the book. He claimed that some people – though not himself - could be offended by the use of the word "pigs". The judge then pointed out that the Bible uses the same word in the saying "do not cast pearls before swine" (St Matthew 7,6).
Svistunov also stated in court that the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is contains no hostile comments about other faiths. He said the book supports the exclusivity of the faith, but added that this is the same for any faith.
Among other assessments, the defence presented a 2004 analysis by Professor Boris Falikov, of the Russian State Humanitarian University's Centre of Comparative Religions (who is Russian Orthodox), which noted that: "Prabhupada's books do not express any negative views or positions in relation to any ethnic, racial, national or religious groups". However, the court refused to accept the analysis because it did not specify which edition of the book it analysed.
In the evening of 30 August, Judge Butenko agreed to the Prosecutor's request to order a further "psychological/religious studies/linguistic expert analysis" of the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is, this time by three academics at Kemerovo State University. The three academics are Aleksey Gorbatov (religious studies), Mikhail Osadchy (linguist) and Sergei Dranishnikov (psychologist). The instructions to the experts drawn up by the Prosecutor's Office include the formulation "manipulation of consciousness".
The Hare Krishna community has expressed concern over the choice of "experts", pointing out that Gorbatov is not an expert in Hinduism and that his main publications have been on the history of Christianity in Siberia. They are also concerned at another of the three new "experts", Osadchy, as he was one of three Kemerovo State University "experts" who found that Jehovah's Witness literature was "extremist". The May 2009 "expert analysis" to which Osadchy contributed formed a basis for the prosecution in Gorno-Altaisk on extremism-related charges of local Jehovah's Witness Aleksandr Kalistratov.
The book's publishers in Russia, the Hare Krishna-run Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, appealed against the judge's decision to send the book for further analysis. However, on 30 September Tomsk Regional Court rejected their suit. This allowed the Lenin District Court to request the expert analysis on 3 October, to be submitted by 1 December.
Some doubt that the second analysis of the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is will be more accurate than the first. "The defence succeeded in completely rejecting the conclusions of the 'expert analysis'," Nikolai Karpitsky, a philosophy lecturer at Siberian State Medical University, told Forum 18 from Tomsk on 4 October. Karpitsky, who is Russian Orthodox, attended court hearings as an expert for the defence. "The court had two choices: to agree that no reason exists to consider the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is extremist, or to decide that the court didn't have enough evidence to make a decision. The court chose the second option."
Kemerovo State University is "practically the only place where the Prosecutor's Office analysis that a book is extremist would be confirmed", Karpitsky told Forum 18. "That's why the court rejected the defence's suggestions of possible experts in Moscow or Yekaterinburg. I think all the mistakes of the first 'expert analysis' will be removed this time round, making it much harder to challenge the new 'expert analysis' in court."
At the 19 December 2011 hearing, it became known that one of the Kemerovo "experts" had not found evidence of extremism in the book, though the two others said they had.
Tomsk regional Ombudsperson for Human Rights Nelli Krechetova asked for a statement to be included in the record. Stressing that she was not simply defending the interests of the local Hare Krishna community but of the rights to freedom of religion or belief guaranteed in Russia's Constitution, she condemned the case as "absurd". She said holy books of the world religions should not be subject to court hearings as to whether they are "extremist".
"Secondly, a possible ban on a book and subsequently a ban on the religious activity of those who honour it violate citizens' rights to freedom of conscience and belief and freedom of speech." Krechetova pointed out that no extremist activity initiated by this book had been seen in Russia.
Russia's Ombudsperson Lukin also requested that his representative be allowed to participate, which was granted. The case was then adjourned until 28 December.
The case aroused fierce condemnation in India, with senior politicians raising the issue with their Russian counterparts.
Kadakin, Russia's Ambassador in New Delhi, was especially outspoken, describing the attempts to ban the book as "sad". In a 20 December English-language statement posted on the Russian Embassy website, he claimed Russia respected the scriptures of all faiths and described it as "categorically inadmissible when any holy scripture is taken to the courts". "It is not normal either when religious books are sent for examination to ignorant people," he added. "Their academic scrutiny should be done at scientists' fora, congresses, seminars, etc but not in courts." He even described those seeking to ban the work in Tomsk as "madmen".
Ambassador Kadakin went further in an interview with the Indian English-language television station CNN-IBN broadcast the same day. He welcomed the outrage expressed in the Indian Parliament and said that "our two governments should not allow such things to happen". He also welcomed pressure from Human Rights Ombudsperson Lukin, though he claimed that Russian courts are independent. He repeated his earlier description of those initiating the case as "madmen", adding that "this madness should be stopped".
However, in a 22 December Foreign Ministry briefing in Moscow, of which a transcript was posted on the Ministry website, spokesperson Aleksandr Lukashevich claimed that the Tomsk case was directed not at the Bhagavad-Gita as such. He said it was directed at Swami Prabhupada's commentaries to his translation of it "which were considered to fall under the scope of Article 13 of Russia's Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activity".
Lukashevich then added that the case was also directed at Swami Prabhupada's "inadequate" translation of the original text, "the double translation of which suffers from distortions of meaning". He gave no evidence for his claims of any "distortions", nor did he explain why it was the role of the Foreign Ministry to determine whether a translation of a religious book is accurate or not.
On 28 December 2011, Judge Galina Butenko of Tomsk's Lenin District Court rejected the prosecutor's suit to have the third Russian edition of the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is ruled extremist. The final 28 December 2011 hearing was brief. Judge Butenko rejected the prosecution move to change the formulation of the accusation, and rejected the defence move to commission a new "expert analysis". After withdrawing for half-an-hour, she returned to announce that she was rejecting the prosecution suit.
Who inspired banning attempt?
While the Lenin District Court proceedings made clear that the FSB security service had initiated the 2010 "expert analysis" of the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, regional FSB officials insisted to Forum 18 in August 2011 that it had played "no role" in the case and that the Prosecutor's Office had been behind the suit. The Tomsk Prosecutor's Office refused to tell Forum 18 in August 2011 who had decided to initiate the case (see F18News 10 October 2011 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1623).
In an analysis posted on his Livejournal blog on 2 January, Nikolai Karpitsky carefully reviewed all the evidence of possible initiators of the Tomsk case. Karpitsky - a philosophy lecturer at Siberian State Medical University in Tomsk, who is himself Russian Orthodox – took a close interest in the case on the side of the defence and attended hearings.
Karpitsky argues that despite evidence of FSB involvement, it is unlikely its officers would have initiated the case "unless they had an order from elsewhere". He also discounts the idea that the three Tomsk University "experts" who conducted the initial 2010 analysis were behind it, given their surprise that it would be used in court to try to ban the book and their renunciation of their analysis in court. He also rejects the idea that other academics could have been behind it.
Karpitsky notes that an order or team could have come from Moscow to oversee the case, but can find no evidence of this. He points out that the FSB security service kept secret the case between October 2010 and June 2011. He argues that had the FSB been following a secret instruction from Moscow to prepare the case for court it would not have allowed Maksim Stepanenko, the head of the Tomsk Russian Orthodox Diocese's Missionary Centre, to launch an attack on the book on 29 June 2011, one day before the prosecution case was handed to Lenin District Court. Stepanenko's extensive attack on quotes from the work closely paralleled the 2010 "expert analysis" which was not yet available to the court.
Karpitsky describes Stepanenko as "the remaining possibility" as the initiator of the case.
Stepanenko rejected such suggestions, attacking Karpitsky's analysis which he appeared to have read. "I didn't know there would be a court case about the book when I published my article," he told Forum18 from Tomsk on 5 January. He denied that he had any contacts with the FSB or the Prosecutor's Office. While welcoming the attempt to ban the book, he insisted he had learnt of the case from materials published on the internet by the Hare Krishna community. Stepanenko had put the phone down before Forum 18 could ask if he had access to the 2010 analysis before he published his June 2011 article.
Karpitsky also questioned why so much tax-payers' money had been devoted to the case to ban a religious work.
Viktor Fedotov, Tomsk's Prosecutor, asked the city's Lenin District Court to rule the third Russian edition of the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is extremist. The book is a Russian edition of a translation by Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. An "expert analysis" completed in October 2010 by three academics at Tomsk State University – Sergei Avanesov, Valeri Svistunov and Valeri Naumov at the request of FSB security service officer Dmitry Velikotsky found that the book "contains signs of incitement of religious hatred and humiliation of an individual based on gender, race, ethnicity, language, origin or attitude to religion", he said. The analysis claimed the book humiliated those who did not believe in or even know about Krishna or follow Krishna's teachings. It claimed that the author propagated the exclusivity and superiority of his faith and was hostile, insulting and humiliating about other faiths. It also claimed that the author called for hostile or violent acts against women and non-Hare Krishna devotees.
Tomsk Prosecutor Fedotov argued that the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is was therefore extremist under Article 1 of the 2002 Extremism Law. Article 13 of the same Law bans the distribution or storage for the purposes of distribution of such extremist works. He cited a 24 June report by Tomsk regional FSB security service that it had obtained the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is at the Saraswati Indian shop in Tomsk. Fedotov also asked the court to send its ruling that the book is extremist to the federal authorities in Moscow, so that it could be included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials and banned throughout Russia.
Fedotov, Tomsk's Prosecutor, asked Lenin District Court to find the book extremist and send its ruling to the federal authorities in Moscow, so that it could be included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials and banned throughout Russia.
Prosecutors in Tomsk are seeking through the courts to have the Russian translation of the most important work for Hare Krishna devotees – the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is - declared "extremist" and placed on the Federal List of Extremist Materials. "This case is more than important for us - it is vital," Hare Krishna lawyer Mikhail Frolov told Forum 18 News Service from Moscow on 4 October. "This is the most important development in the whole history of our movement in Russia. They are trying not just to declare our book extremist, but our religious teaching also. If they succeed, our community throughout Russia could be declared extremist."
At Lenin District Court, the case was handed to Judge Galina Butenko, the court website notes. Four hearings took place between 12 and 30 August, when the case was suspended. As the case began, human rights defenders picketed the court, with posters quoting the rights to religious freedom and freedom of speech in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Russian Constitution.
Also displayed were quotations from the 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 by the writer Ray Bradbury, which envisages a future where all books are burnt and those who possess them punished. One poster quoted an exchange from the novel between a woman and her neighbour, a fireman who burns books: "'Do you ever read any of the books you burn?' He laughed. 'That's against the law!'"
During the hearings the three compilers of the "expert analysis" were questioned. On 18 August, Avanesov admitted in court that the FSB security service had asked him to conduct the analysis in 2010, long before the case reached court. In response to a question from the judge, he acknowledged that he sees no direct incitement to discord in the book. He claimed that some people – though not himself - could be offended by the use of the word "pigs". The judge then pointed out that the Bible uses the same word in the saying "do not cast pearls before swine" (St Matthew 7,6).
Svistunov also stated in court that the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is contains no hostile comments about other faiths. He said the book supports the exclusivity of the faith, but added that this is the same for any faith.
Among other assessments, the defence presented a 2004 analysis by Professor Boris Falikov, of the Russian State Humanitarian University's Centre of Comparative Religions (who is Russian Orthodox), which noted that: "Prabhupada's books do not express any negative views or positions in relation to any ethnic, racial, national or religious groups". However, the court refused to accept the analysis because it did not specify which edition of the book it analysed.
In the evening of 30 August, Judge Butenko agreed to the Prosecutor's request to order a further "psychological/religious studies/linguistic expert analysis" of the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is, this time by three academics at Kemerovo State University. The three academics are Aleksey Gorbatov (religious studies), Mikhail Osadchy (linguist) and Sergei Dranishnikov (psychologist). The instructions to the experts drawn up by the Prosecutor's Office include the formulation "manipulation of consciousness".
The Hare Krishna community has expressed concern over the choice of "experts", pointing out that Gorbatov is not an expert in Hinduism and that his main publications have been on the history of Christianity in Siberia. They are also concerned at another of the three new "experts", Osadchy, as he was one of three Kemerovo State University "experts" who found that Jehovah's Witness literature was "extremist". The May 2009 "expert analysis" to which Osadchy contributed formed a basis for the prosecution in Gorno-Altaisk on extremism-related charges of local Jehovah's Witness Aleksandr Kalistratov.
The book's publishers in Russia, the Hare Krishna-run Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, appealed against the judge's decision to send the book for further analysis. However, on 30 September Tomsk Regional Court rejected their suit. This allowed the Lenin District Court to request the expert analysis on 3 October, to be submitted by 1 December.
Some doubt that the second analysis of the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is will be more accurate than the first. "The defence succeeded in completely rejecting the conclusions of the 'expert analysis'," Nikolai Karpitsky, a philosophy lecturer at Siberian State Medical University, told Forum 18 from Tomsk on 4 October. Karpitsky, who is Russian Orthodox, attended court hearings as an expert for the defence. "The court had two choices: to agree that no reason exists to consider the Bhagavad-Gita As it Is extremist, or to decide that the court didn't have enough evidence to make a decision. The court chose the second option."
Kemerovo State University is "practically the only place where the Prosecutor's Office analysis that a book is extremist would be confirmed", Karpitsky told Forum 18. "That's why the court rejected the defence's suggestions of possible experts in Moscow or Yekaterinburg. I think all the mistakes of the first 'expert analysis' will be removed this time round, making it much harder to challenge the new 'expert analysis' in court."
At the 19 December 2011 hearing, it became known that one of the Kemerovo "experts" had not found evidence of extremism in the book, though the two others said they had.
Tomsk regional Ombudsperson for Human Rights Nelli Krechetova asked for a statement to be included in the record. Stressing that she was not simply defending the interests of the local Hare Krishna community but of the rights to freedom of religion or belief guaranteed in Russia's Constitution, she condemned the case as "absurd". She said holy books of the world religions should not be subject to court hearings as to whether they are "extremist".
"Secondly, a possible ban on a book and subsequently a ban on the religious activity of those who honour it violate citizens' rights to freedom of conscience and belief and freedom of speech." Krechetova pointed out that no extremist activity initiated by this book had been seen in Russia.
Russia's Ombudsperson Lukin also requested that his representative be allowed to participate, which was granted. The case was then adjourned until 28 December.
The case aroused fierce condemnation in India, with senior politicians raising the issue with their Russian counterparts.
Kadakin, Russia's Ambassador in New Delhi, was especially outspoken, describing the attempts to ban the book as "sad". In a 20 December English-language statement posted on the Russian Embassy website, he claimed Russia respected the scriptures of all faiths and described it as "categorically inadmissible when any holy scripture is taken to the courts". "It is not normal either when religious books are sent for examination to ignorant people," he added. "Their academic scrutiny should be done at scientists' fora, congresses, seminars, etc but not in courts." He even described those seeking to ban the work in Tomsk as "madmen".
Ambassador Kadakin went further in an interview with the Indian English-language television station CNN-IBN broadcast the same day. He welcomed the outrage expressed in the Indian Parliament and said that "our two governments should not allow such things to happen". He also welcomed pressure from Human Rights Ombudsperson Lukin, though he claimed that Russian courts are independent. He repeated his earlier description of those initiating the case as "madmen", adding that "this madness should be stopped".
However, in a 22 December Foreign Ministry briefing in Moscow, of which a transcript was posted on the Ministry website, spokesperson Aleksandr Lukashevich claimed that the Tomsk case was directed not at the Bhagavad-Gita as such. He said it was directed at Swami Prabhupada's commentaries to his translation of it "which were considered to fall under the scope of Article 13 of Russia's Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activity".
Lukashevich then added that the case was also directed at Swami Prabhupada's "inadequate" translation of the original text, "the double translation of which suffers from distortions of meaning". He gave no evidence for his claims of any "distortions", nor did he explain why it was the role of the Foreign Ministry to determine whether a translation of a religious book is accurate or not.
On 28 December 2011, Judge Galina Butenko of Tomsk's Lenin District Court rejected the prosecutor's suit to have the third Russian edition of the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is ruled extremist. The final 28 December 2011 hearing was brief. Judge Butenko rejected the prosecution move to change the formulation of the accusation, and rejected the defence move to commission a new "expert analysis". After withdrawing for half-an-hour, she returned to announce that she was rejecting the prosecution suit.
Who inspired banning attempt?
While the Lenin District Court proceedings made clear that the FSB security service had initiated the 2010 "expert analysis" of the Bhagavad-Gita As It Is, regional FSB officials insisted to Forum 18 in August 2011 that it had played "no role" in the case and that the Prosecutor's Office had been behind the suit. The Tomsk Prosecutor's Office refused to tell Forum 18 in August 2011 who had decided to initiate the case (see F18News 10 October 2011 http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1623).
In an analysis posted on his Livejournal blog on 2 January, Nikolai Karpitsky carefully reviewed all the evidence of possible initiators of the Tomsk case. Karpitsky - a philosophy lecturer at Siberian State Medical University in Tomsk, who is himself Russian Orthodox – took a close interest in the case on the side of the defence and attended hearings.
Karpitsky argues that despite evidence of FSB involvement, it is unlikely its officers would have initiated the case "unless they had an order from elsewhere". He also discounts the idea that the three Tomsk University "experts" who conducted the initial 2010 analysis were behind it, given their surprise that it would be used in court to try to ban the book and their renunciation of their analysis in court. He also rejects the idea that other academics could have been behind it.
Karpitsky notes that an order or team could have come from Moscow to oversee the case, but can find no evidence of this. He points out that the FSB security service kept secret the case between October 2010 and June 2011. He argues that had the FSB been following a secret instruction from Moscow to prepare the case for court it would not have allowed Maksim Stepanenko, the head of the Tomsk Russian Orthodox Diocese's Missionary Centre, to launch an attack on the book on 29 June 2011, one day before the prosecution case was handed to Lenin District Court. Stepanenko's extensive attack on quotes from the work closely paralleled the 2010 "expert analysis" which was not yet available to the court.
Karpitsky describes Stepanenko as "the remaining possibility" as the initiator of the case.
Stepanenko rejected such suggestions, attacking Karpitsky's analysis which he appeared to have read. "I didn't know there would be a court case about the book when I published my article," he told Forum18 from Tomsk on 5 January. He denied that he had any contacts with the FSB or the Prosecutor's Office. While welcoming the attempt to ban the book, he insisted he had learnt of the case from materials published on the internet by the Hare Krishna community. Stepanenko had put the phone down before Forum 18 could ask if he had access to the 2010 analysis before he published his June 2011 article.
Karpitsky also questioned why so much tax-payers' money had been devoted to the case to ban a religious work.
