NATIONAL INTOLERANCE IN RUSSIA ROOTED IN AUTHORITY INCOMPETENCE

PanARMENIAN.Net - Faith in Victory conference was held in the Small Auditorium of the Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg. The event was organized by the Organizational Committee of the Religion and Peace public program, administration of Deputy Chairman of the Committee for activities of NGOs and religious associations of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of Russia A. Chuyev, Dialogue and Deed Saint Petersburg inter-sector coalition, Partnership of Voice (Saint Petersburg), reported the Yerkramas newspaper of Armenians of Russia. As stated by coordinator of Dialogue and Deed coalition and Partnership of Voice, Antuan Arakelian, the organizers pursued the following goals: coverage of the contribution of representatives of different religious confessions to the Victory, impact of the faith to the actions of people in the years of the Great Patriotic War, promotion of the unification of efforts of confessions and the society in maintaining peace and progressive development of country, making the moral upbringing of the growing generation. The conference was blessed by Saint Petersburg Metropolit Vladimir and over 100 representatives of religious confessions and denominations, non-governmental unions, scientific and teaching communities, journalists, deputies of the Russian State Duma, Legislative Assembly of Saint Petersburg, guests from Moscow, the US, Germany, Poland, Armenia. Those addressing the conference noted the alarming manifestations of intolerance, violence, and vandalism in the country, the increasing trends of development of xenophobia, ideological and political radicalism, extremism, accentuating that just that country has made the basic contribution to the victory over fascism. They noted with deep regret that judging from reports of experts and scientists, international and home monitoring and researches, Russia occupies one of the top positions among other countries in the rating of such "disgraceful" phenomena. Independent experts and specialists suppose that the aforementioned situation is caused by the incompetence of the authority bodies in national policy, concealment or distortion of today's hard reality by them, deficit of dialogue between the society and the authorities, absence of a reliable feed-back in the society - both in the horizontal and vertical directions. At that the situation is aggravated by a protracted and profound social and economic crisis in the country, the Chechen and the common Caucasian problems. The conference participants passed an Appeal urging the state authority bodies and the media to respond to the civil initiative and start actively develop partnership relations within implementation of Religion and Peace program. The latter outlines a complex of civil actions and initiatives that will stimulate the public intercourse over socially important issues and that will promote bringing the legislation and application of the law in line with today's problems. "Unification of the efforts of constructive and patriotic religious groups and the society to harmonize inter-personal and ethno-confessional relations in the Russian society is our duty to the memory of those, who had defended the independence of the country in Wold War II. These efforts should become an important factor for stability and strengthening unity of Russia," the Appeal says.