Racist attacks rise in Russia
2008-01-29 15:59
Moscow - Russia experienced a surge in racist violence last year, with 67 people killed in racist attacks compared with 61 the previous year, an independent monitoring group said on Tuesday.
"There's a consistent growth in racist violence.... The violence became more severe," said Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy head of the monitoring organisation Sova, at the presentation of an annual report on racism in Russia.
In total 632 people suffered attacks with a clearly racist motive last year, a 12% rise on 2006, the organisation said.
At the same time the number of convictions for racist violence fell after several years of increased convictions, from 33 in 2006 to 24 in 2007, Kozhevnikova said.
Earlier this month another rights organisation, the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, also reported that the number of racist killings rose in 2007 but put the number at 74.
In recent years, Russia has seen several racist killings of foreigners, many of them students. Meanwhile the country continues to see numerous attacks by far right groups on members of racial minorities, as well as on migrants from neighbouring ex-Soviet states.
A new trend last year was the emergence of racism among some pro-Kremlin youth groups that have sprung up in recent years, said Kozhevnikova, adding that this had led directly to attacks in some cases.
"Ultra-nationalists or people with racist tendencies can do what they like provided they observe certain rules: they shouldn't speak out against the authorities, should be loyal... and then you won't be bothered or detained.
"This means there's no stimulus for a reduction of far-right activity," said Kozhevnikova.
On the positive side, the year saw an increase in the number of convictions for inciting racism. However a loosely worded extremism law was also used by the authorities to clamp down on political opponents who had no racist motive, said Sova's director, Alexander Verkhovsky.
The group described its statistics as a minimum assessment of the number of racist attacks, excluding several categories of violence.
Among the categories excluded from the count were attacks in the unstable North Caucasus region of Russia and attacks possibly motivated by antipathy towards sexual minorities and homeless people.