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THE CRUELEST MONTH
by Nickolai Butkevich
Transitions Online, Czech Republic
May 4 2006
April saw a rash of particularly ugly attacks against minorities,
as fascism finds fertile soil in Russia.
On 20 April, neo-Nazis around the world celebrated the 117th
anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth. Nowhere was the date marked
with more violence than in Russia, a country that, paradoxically,
lost tens of millions of its citizens in the struggle against Nazism
six decades ago.
When it comes to racist violence, April 2006 will go on record as
the bloodiest month in recent Russian history, with at least seven
murders and more than a dozen assaults blamed on neo-Nazi groups.
Since the late 1990s, Russia's homegrown fascists have spent the
days surrounding 20 April stepping up their year-round campaign of
violence against dark-skinned ethnic minorities, foreign students
(predominantly from developing countries), and Jews. This disgusting
annual spectacle is presumably deeply embarrassing to President
Vladimir Putin, who has publicly condemned racism and anti-Semitism.
Yet despite the mobilization of thousands of extra police officers
in Moscow and other cities every April, Russian authorities seem
helpless to stem the tide of violence.
Nowhere is the situation worse than in Russia's beautiful "northern
capital," St. Petersburg. On 7 April, skinheads in that city shot dead
an African student. Lamzar Samba, a 28-year-old Senegalese national,
became the ninth African killed there over the past year, according to
a local African student group. Police discovered a swastika engraved
on a shotgun near the scene and briefly arrested a suspect before
releasing him.
Several racist assaults also occurred in St. Petersburg last month
- a Chinese student was attacked outside her apartment, a Ghanaian
man was savagely beaten in the city's suburbs, a mob of soccer fans
assaulted two Mongolian students on a metro train, and an Indian
medical student was stabbed.
Local neo-Nazi web sites brazenly called for more violence against
non-Russians to mark Hitler's birthday and even posted a how-to manual
with advice on how to evade arrest afterward.
Unfortunately, St. Petersburg is not the only Russian city where
violent racists are running amok. On 8 April, a Moscow paper reported
that skinheads beat two Tajik men on a suburban Moscow train before
throwing them off, killing one of their victims. No arrests were
reported in connection with that murder. Even ethnic Russian youths
are not safe in Moscow if they belong to an anti-fascist youth group.
On 16 April, skinheads stabbed to death an anti-fascist punk rock
fan in what his friends termed a coordinated attack. One suspect has
been detained.
On 13 April, a group of young men armed with iron bars and wooden
clubs attacked a Romani camp in Volzhsky, killing two and seriously
injuring an 80-year-old woman and a 14-year-old girl. Police detained
nine teenage suspects, some of whom admitted that their attack was
motivated by ethnic hatred. Other racist murders committed during
the month include the killing of a 50-year-old Vietnamese man in
Ostrogozhsk, in the Voronezh region; the stabbing death of a Tajik
man in Moscow (his friend was seriously injured); and the murder of
an Armenian student by skinheads on the Moscow metro.
Other non-fatal attacks were reported last month in Ryazan (where
four youths were charged with a hate crime after beating up an Indian
student); Chita (where a dozen youths shouting racist slogans attacked
a group of Chinese construction workers, leading to six arrests on
charges of "minor hooliganism"); Nizhny Novgorod (where a Malaysian
student was hospitalized after an assailant hit him on the head and
fled and two Syrian students were beaten up in a nightclub); and Surgut
(where, in separate incidents, a group of skinheads attacked an ethnic
Kazakh youth and an ethnic Lezgin, leading to hate-crimes charges).
The leader of the Jewish community of Izhevsk narrowly avoided a
similar fate on the second evening of Passover, when he and another
member of the community ducked into a hotel lobby to avoid a mob
of youths parading down the street shouting "Sieg Heil!" and other
anti-Semitic slurs. A similar incident took place in Rybinsk, in
Yaroslavl region.
HALF MEASURES
While racist violence has become a daily feature of Russian life,
it should be noted that there have been some improvements in the
way the government deals with hate crimes. Starting in 2002, the
number of arrests of skinheads increased. To their credit, police
this year prevented similar crimes by quickly rounding up skinheads
in Bryansk and Novosibirsk before they could strike. Unfortunately,
police chiefs in St. Petersburg and Voronezh - the cities with the
worst reputation for racist violence in the country - minimized the
extent of the problem by blaming a supposed media conspiracy against
local officials. The Voronezh chief of police even went so far as to
state that the number of murders in his region (four in recent years)
was "not that many."
Given the multiethnic nature of the country, xenophobic violence has
clear implications for future political and economic stability if it is
allowed to spin out of control. In combination with a greater emphasis
on promoting tolerance among the nation's youth, federal and regional
authorities must systematically crack down on skinhead gangs, and the
media need to have regular access to hate-crimes trials in order to
discourage judges from giving neo-Nazi thugs lighter sentences than
ordinary criminals.
Most importantly, Kremlin political advisers should never again
create and support openly racist parties like Motherland, which was
put together before the last parliamentary elections in order to
drain votes away from the nationalist opposition. Only then will it
be possible to imagine a time when 20 April returns to being just
another ordinary spring day in Russia.
Nickolai Butkevich is research and advocacy director for the Union
of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union.
by Nickolai Butkevich
Transitions Online, Czech Republic
May 4 2006
April saw a rash of particularly ugly attacks against minorities,
as fascism finds fertile soil in Russia.
On 20 April, neo-Nazis around the world celebrated the 117th
anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth. Nowhere was the date marked
with more violence than in Russia, a country that, paradoxically,
lost tens of millions of its citizens in the struggle against Nazism
six decades ago.
When it comes to racist violence, April 2006 will go on record as
the bloodiest month in recent Russian history, with at least seven
murders and more than a dozen assaults blamed on neo-Nazi groups.
Since the late 1990s, Russia's homegrown fascists have spent the
days surrounding 20 April stepping up their year-round campaign of
violence against dark-skinned ethnic minorities, foreign students
(predominantly from developing countries), and Jews. This disgusting
annual spectacle is presumably deeply embarrassing to President
Vladimir Putin, who has publicly condemned racism and anti-Semitism.
Yet despite the mobilization of thousands of extra police officers
in Moscow and other cities every April, Russian authorities seem
helpless to stem the tide of violence.
Nowhere is the situation worse than in Russia's beautiful "northern
capital," St. Petersburg. On 7 April, skinheads in that city shot dead
an African student. Lamzar Samba, a 28-year-old Senegalese national,
became the ninth African killed there over the past year, according to
a local African student group. Police discovered a swastika engraved
on a shotgun near the scene and briefly arrested a suspect before
releasing him.
Several racist assaults also occurred in St. Petersburg last month
- a Chinese student was attacked outside her apartment, a Ghanaian
man was savagely beaten in the city's suburbs, a mob of soccer fans
assaulted two Mongolian students on a metro train, and an Indian
medical student was stabbed.
Local neo-Nazi web sites brazenly called for more violence against
non-Russians to mark Hitler's birthday and even posted a how-to manual
with advice on how to evade arrest afterward.
Unfortunately, St. Petersburg is not the only Russian city where
violent racists are running amok. On 8 April, a Moscow paper reported
that skinheads beat two Tajik men on a suburban Moscow train before
throwing them off, killing one of their victims. No arrests were
reported in connection with that murder. Even ethnic Russian youths
are not safe in Moscow if they belong to an anti-fascist youth group.
On 16 April, skinheads stabbed to death an anti-fascist punk rock
fan in what his friends termed a coordinated attack. One suspect has
been detained.
On 13 April, a group of young men armed with iron bars and wooden
clubs attacked a Romani camp in Volzhsky, killing two and seriously
injuring an 80-year-old woman and a 14-year-old girl. Police detained
nine teenage suspects, some of whom admitted that their attack was
motivated by ethnic hatred. Other racist murders committed during
the month include the killing of a 50-year-old Vietnamese man in
Ostrogozhsk, in the Voronezh region; the stabbing death of a Tajik
man in Moscow (his friend was seriously injured); and the murder of
an Armenian student by skinheads on the Moscow metro.
Other non-fatal attacks were reported last month in Ryazan (where
four youths were charged with a hate crime after beating up an Indian
student); Chita (where a dozen youths shouting racist slogans attacked
a group of Chinese construction workers, leading to six arrests on
charges of "minor hooliganism"); Nizhny Novgorod (where a Malaysian
student was hospitalized after an assailant hit him on the head and
fled and two Syrian students were beaten up in a nightclub); and Surgut
(where, in separate incidents, a group of skinheads attacked an ethnic
Kazakh youth and an ethnic Lezgin, leading to hate-crimes charges).
The leader of the Jewish community of Izhevsk narrowly avoided a
similar fate on the second evening of Passover, when he and another
member of the community ducked into a hotel lobby to avoid a mob
of youths parading down the street shouting "Sieg Heil!" and other
anti-Semitic slurs. A similar incident took place in Rybinsk, in
Yaroslavl region.
HALF MEASURES
While racist violence has become a daily feature of Russian life,
it should be noted that there have been some improvements in the
way the government deals with hate crimes. Starting in 2002, the
number of arrests of skinheads increased. To their credit, police
this year prevented similar crimes by quickly rounding up skinheads
in Bryansk and Novosibirsk before they could strike. Unfortunately,
police chiefs in St. Petersburg and Voronezh - the cities with the
worst reputation for racist violence in the country - minimized the
extent of the problem by blaming a supposed media conspiracy against
local officials. The Voronezh chief of police even went so far as to
state that the number of murders in his region (four in recent years)
was "not that many."
Given the multiethnic nature of the country, xenophobic violence has
clear implications for future political and economic stability if it is
allowed to spin out of control. In combination with a greater emphasis
on promoting tolerance among the nation's youth, federal and regional
authorities must systematically crack down on skinhead gangs, and the
media need to have regular access to hate-crimes trials in order to
discourage judges from giving neo-Nazi thugs lighter sentences than
ordinary criminals.
Most importantly, Kremlin political advisers should never again
create and support openly racist parties like Motherland, which was
put together before the last parliamentary elections in order to
drain votes away from the nationalist opposition. Only then will it
be possible to imagine a time when 20 April returns to being just
another ordinary spring day in Russia.
Nickolai Butkevich is research and advocacy director for the Union
of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union.