The Moscow Times, Russia
April 24 2006

Armenian Student Killed by Skinheads

By Oksana Yablokova
Staff Writer

An Armenian teenager standing on a crowded metro platform in the
heart of the city was stabbed to death Saturday by an unknown
attacker.

The slaying of Vagan Abramyants, 17, took place around 5 p.m. at the
Pushkinskaya metro station as the boy was en route to an Orthodox
Easter party.

A train heading to Vykhino entered the station, and seven young men
got off. Abramyants, who was with 11 acquaintances, was unexpectedly
attacked.

Interfax, citing police reports, reported that one of the men stabbed
Abramyants in the chest and that all of them fled on the departing
train. Abramyants died on the spot.

Witnesses said the attackers had shaved heads, black clothes and
boots, police said.

Abramyants’ death was the latest in a string of attacks across Russia
on dark-skinned people from the Caucasus, Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

Two weeks ago, a Senegalese student was shot dead with a gun with a
swastika on it. A young man shouting “Heil Hitler” stormed into a
central Moscow synagogue earlier this year, stabbing worshipers.

After the attack on Abramyants, dozens of police officers formed a
semicircle around the body, which lay sprawled in the central
corridor of the metro station, as shoppers, kids and couples streamed
past.

The upper body was covered with a sheet. Abramyants’ hands and feet
were visible; his legs, from the knees down, could also be seen.

The metro branch of the prosecutor’s office has opened a criminal
probe but has not yet classified the attack as a hate crime. No
suspects had been detained as of Sunday.

Ara Abramyan, an Armenian community leader, said Sunday that
Abramyants was a Russian citizen who lived in Tyoply Stan, in
southwestern Moscow.

Abramyants was a student at the Moscow Management Institute, Abramyan
said.

Abramyan, sounding a criticism that has become common among minority
leaders, accused the police of not acting aggressively enough against
skinheads.

“I was there yesterday and talked to the police chief,” Abramyan
said. “I can’t understand how a group of people could simply stab a
person in the metro in the very center of Moscow and get away. How
did the police manage not to arrest anyone? What about their video
cameras?”

Two million Armenians live in Russia, Abramyan said. He added that
Armenians have been advised against riding the metro in the evening
and going out in the outlying districts of cities, where most
racially motivated attacks occur.

A woman who phoned Ekho Moskvy radio Sunday, calling herself
Sharipova, said one of Abramyants’ acquaintances was also slashed on
the face.

Police and prosecutor’s office officials could not be reached for
comment.

Abramyants’ killing was not the only hate crime committed over the
weekend.

On Friday, four Chinese students from Kostroma State University were
beaten by three attackers near their dormitory in Kostroma, a city on
the Volga, RIA-Novosti reported.

The students were treated for minor injuries but did not require
hospitalization.

Police detained and charged three suspects in the attack, including
one who was also charged with an attack on an Azeri girl on Thursday.

Also, a Zambian student was attacked Saturday in St. Petersburg,
Interfax reported, citing police.

Police are not listing the attack on the student, whose name and age
they declined to disclose, as a hate crime, saying he was simply
robbed.

The student was on his way to visit an acquaintance on Shkolnaya
Ulitsa when an attacker hit him with a bottle on the head from
behind, and he fainted. When he regained consciousness, his wallet,
with 1,000 rubles, was missing.

In recent years, skinheads and other fascist groups have celebrated
April 20, Adolf Hitler’s birthday, by attacking dark-skinned people.