Lack of proper response to ethnic murders in Russia – Armenian community

ITAR-TASS news agency
22 Apr 06

Moscow, 22 April: Moscow’s Armenian community will not allow the murder
of an Armenian citizen in central Moscow [today] to go unnoticed,
president of the Union of Armenians in Russia Ara Abramyan has said.

“We will most certainly be holding a meeting on Monday [24 April]. We
met every time when there was a racially-motivated murder, and thought
about how these incidents could be prevented,” Abramyan said in a
live broadcast on Ekho Moskvy radio.

He believes these crimes are only possible because the authorities
and society fail to properly respond to manifestations of nationalism
and because these manifestations go unpunished.

“The nationality of a murdered person is not important. This is a
problem for the whole of Russia. If we have extremism and nationalism,
we should call things by their proper names and then these incidents
may not happen again,” he said. [Passage omitted]

[ITAR-TASS at 1805 gmt today said that the Moscow prosecutor’s office
has launched an investigation into the attack under Article 105 of
the Criminal Code (murder). Various leads are being investigated,
the prosecutor’s office said, including a murder motivated by ethnic
hatred]