MOSCOW,
April 4, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Russia's
Orthodox Church on Tuesday, April 4, blamed rising racism in the
country on liberalism and tolerance regarding homosexuality, abortion
and euthanasia.
"You
can't complain about a rise in xenophobia at a time when we allow a
person to destroy the sacred, spit on his fatherland, destroy his own
culture without being stopped by right-thinking people,"
Metropolitan Kirill was quoted by Reuters as saying.
"This
person will go and kill someone else, on the basis of race, or of
faith," he added in an emotional speech to politicians and
religious leaders aired on primetime television.
A
nine-year-old girl from the Central Asian state of Tajikistan was
recently killed by teenagers using chain, baseball bats and knives.
However,
the teenagers were cleared of racism and murder and found guilty of
"hooliganism", receiving sentences of between 18 months and
five-and-a-half years in prison.
Racist
violence has been on the rise in Russia in recent years, mainly
targeting immigrants from the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus
and Central Asia, as well as people from Asia and Africa.
Dozens
of foreigners have been killed in such attacks, but police have failed
to trace their perpetrators.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin has called racism an "infection"
afflicting Russia, and called on society to unite against it.
A
2005 report by the independent Sova group found that murders
officially classified as racists more than doubled in Russia between
2003 and 2004.
Liberalism
Blamed
Kirill
heaped the blame on liberalism.
"We
cannot accept the mocking of the sacred, abortion, homosexuality,
euthanasia, exploitation of national feelings and other such kinds of
behavior that are often defended as a human right."
He
maintained that the conception of human rights is to defend human
values "not to let the genie out of the bottle."
Kirill
singled out the curators of a 2003 exhibition called "Beware,
Religion", which linked religious and capitalist symbols as
examples of the decay afflicting Russian society.
The
curators were convicted of offending the public, a ruling blasted by
rights activists as a violation of freedom of expression.
The
Orthodox Church is considered the guardian of conservative Russian
values at a time of flux following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Putin
frequently meets church leaders and appears at church ceremonies
although he does not publicly support its approach.
