· April, 2009

Stories about Ethnicity & Race from April, 2009

UAE: Torture video sends shock waves around the world

Last week, a grainy video from 2005 made headlines, shaking up viewers around the globe. The video, first shown on U.S.-based ABC News, showed Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahyan - brother of UAE's crown prince torturing an Afghan grain farmer, attacking him with a cattle prod then literally pouring salt on his wounds. Jillian C. York brings us reports from the blogosphere.

Armenia: Shooting the Messenger

  29 April 2009

Security, in the Caucasus and beyond…. comments on the tendency for nationalist voices in Armenia and the Diaspora to shoot down any proposals intended to promote peace and reconciliation with Turkey by discrediting them and preventing any open discussion or independent thought.

Armenia: Joke of the Day

  28 April 2009

Unzipped says joke of the day in Armenia is news that the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) are now calling themselves an opposition political party. Having left the ruling coalition government yesterday in protest at talk of possible reconciliation between estranged neighbors Armenia and Turkey, the blog says that...

Central & Eastern Europe: Racism Roundup

  28 April 2009

The beatroot writes about Poland's boycott of the UN conference on fighting racism; Hungarian Spectrum writes about the Hungarian Guard and Holocaust denial; coverage of Slovenia's neo-Nazis – here and here, by Sleeping With Pengovsky, as well as here, by Piran Cafe; Borut Peterlin posts photos from an anti-fascist rally...

Czech Republic: Blog Roundup

  28 April 2009

A Czech roundup: Czechmatediary – on the new translation of the Bible into contemporary Czech and on Albert Einstein's Prague connection; CzechFolks.com – on xenophobia, job market, and the Brno Expats Forum online community; The Journeys of Captain Oddsocks – on bone churches and the liberation of Plzeň 64 years...

Macedonia: Celebrating Sakura Becomes a Tradition

  27 April 2009

Sakura, the annual celebration of cherry blossoms through display of elements of Japanese culture, took place in Skopje, Macedonia, this weekend: somewhat later than last year, because the organizers did not want it to overlap with the Catholic and Orthodox Easter celebrations during the previous two weekends.

Russia: Baymurat (aka Jimmy) Singing Bollywood Song

  25 April 2009

Videos of a rendition of a Bollywood song by Baymurat (aka Jimmy) – an ethnic Uzbek from Tajikistan, a gastarbeiter in a town near Moscow, and a YouTube celebrity: one of the earlier versions is here, and the performance at Asian Dub Foundation's April 4 gig in St. Petersburg, Russia...

Russia: Union of Repressed Peoples

  25 April 2009

Window on Eurasia reports that “six of the more than a dozen nations Stalin deported during World War II – the Kalmyks, the Chechens, the Ingush, the Balkars, the Karachays, and the Volga Germans — have formed a Union of Repressed Peoples to demand an apology from Moscow and the...

Belarus: LiveJournal Blogosphere

  24 April 2009

Andrei Khrapavitski writes about the Belarusian LiveJournal blogosphere: “Do you know that the Belarusian population of Livejournal is bigger than that of a mid-sized regional town? Oh, yeah, there are MANY of us out there. And we do like to argue. Flipping through my Livejournal friends’ feed is so much...