‘We Are Waging a Racial Holy War’
By Maria Danilova
Moscow Times
June 16 2004
The Associated Press — Semyon Tokmakov stretches out his hand and
points to a thick scar he got from assaulting a black U.S. Marine six
years ago. The attack cost him 1 1/2 years in jail, but Tokmakov says
he has no regrets.
“We are waging a racial holy war,” said Tokmakov, 28, an informal
leader among Moscow’s skinheads, whose violence appears to be rising.
Over the last several years, Russia has become a strikingly hostile
place for all those with African, Asian or so-called Caucasian
features — the dark skin and dark hair typical for the peoples of
the mountainous Caucasus region.
The U.S. Marine was badly beaten in 1998 in a Moscow market, one of
several foreigners targeted in recent years. The last few months
have seen an especially shocking series of brutal racial attacks,
such as the stabbing to death of a Guinea-Bissau student in Voronezh,
the killing of an Afghan asylum seeker in Moscow, and the slaying of
a 9-year-old Tajik girl in St. Petersburg.
Ethnic minorities in Moscow complain that beatings and insults are
almost a daily occurrence.
“Racially motivated crimes are growing in number and brutality by the
year,” said Alexander Brod, head of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights.
According to a two-year study conducted by Brod’s bureau and a few
other groups, there are about 50,000 skinheads in Russia, with Moscow
and St. Petersburg home to about 1,500 each. It said 20 to 30 people
have died in such attacks annually in the past few years, and the
number of such crimes is growing by 30 percent per year.
“When you kill cockroaches, you don’t feel sorry for them, do you?”
Tokmakov said, when asked whether he felt sorry for the slain Tajik
girl.
The growing extremist sentiments are rooted in Russia’s economic
problems, including high unemployment in many regions, and the
collapse of the Soviet Union, which sent hundreds of thousands of
migrants from poorer former Soviet republics to Russia seeking jobs.
“Why have they all come here?” Tokmakov said. “They bring nothing
but drugs and AIDS. Every day they harass and steal our women.”
Political parties and politicians openly played the nationalist card
in the December parliamentary vote, calling for the ouster of migrant
workers and promoting Russia for Russians. Two such political groups,
the Liberal Democratic Party and the Rodina bloc, enjoyed victory in
the election.
Tokmakov said he and his associates had been on the ballot of Rodina
but their names were later crossed out. Party officials have denied
that.
“When there are such economic and other hardships, there are usually
two ways of dealing with it — the first is that of contemplating,
the second is looking for an enemy and blaming him for your problems.
Unfortunately Russia has chosen the second path,” Brod said.
Rafael Arkelov, a 47-year-old Armenian singer who has spent all his
life living in Moscow and for whom Russian is his first language,
has experienced it all.
He was in a grocery store buying a chocolate bar and a bottle of
champagne to visit his friends for a New Year’s celebration when a
man asked him for some change. After Arkelov refused to give him
money, he saw the man approach two youths with shaved heads whom
he identified as skinheads standing nearby and whispered something.
Several minutes later, after Arkelov walked out of the store, he was
jumped from behind.
“They punched me in my eyes, my face, and all of a sudden I couldn’t
see anymore. Then I collapsed to the ground and they started beating
me with their feet,” Arkelov recalled. “If it weren’t for a woman
across the street who screamed ‘What are you doing?’, if it weren’t
for this scream of hers, I think they would have beaten me to death.”
Brod’s study predicted that the number of skinheads could grow to
80,000 to 100,000 within the next two years if authorities don’t
take measures to combat xenophobia. Interior Ministry officials have
said they were closely watching 10,000 suspected members of extremist
groups, but all too often racially motivated attacks are dismissed as
hooliganism. “Racism isn’t unique to Russia, I know it exists in Europe
and America,” Arkelov said. “But unlike Russia, in those countries
it is prosecuted and the state pursues specific policies to combat it.”