FOR FIRST TIME, ANTI-MIGRANT GROUP INVESTIGATED FOR INCITING ETHNIC HATRED

Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union, DC
March 7 2006

For the first time, a member of the Movement Against Illegal
Immigration has been detained on charges of inciting ethnic hatred.

According to a March 7, 2006 report by the Regnum news agency,
Aleksey Safin, the head of that organization’s Kaliningrad branch,
has been arrested on incitement charges after police searched his
computer and found allegedly illegal materials on his computer which
Mr. Safin used to maintain the regional branch’s web site. The local
branch is not officially registered, making its prosecution easier.

Although not mentioned in the report, the Movement Against Illegal
Immigration first came upon the scene when it was linked in the
media with anti-Armenian violence in the Moscow region city of
Krasnoarmeysk a few years ago. Since then, under the leadership of a
former Pamyat activist, it has grown into one of the leading far-right
organizations in Russia. Last November, it played a major part in
a far-right march in Moscow which featured extremist nationalist
rhetoric against migrants and Jews. No incitement charges were filed
against participants in that march.