MOSCOW POLICE ARREST TEENAGER IN CONNECTION WITH FATAL STABBING OF ARMENIAN STUDENT
PRAVDA, Russia
April 24 2006
Police arrested a teenager in connection with the fatal stabbing of
an Armenian student on a Moscow subway platform over the weekend,
a city prosecutor’s official said.
The killing was the latest in a wave of attacks against dark-skinned
immigrants from the southern Caucasus regions and former Soviet
Central Asia.
Sergei Marchenko, a spokesman for Moscow prosecutor’s office, said
in televised comments that a 17-year-old boy was detained Monday and
had confessed to the Saturday evening killing.
Russian news agencies said investigators had classified the attack
as simple murder, but were considering classifying the killing as a
hate crime.
The ITAR-Tass news agency said the victim – a 17-year-old Armenian
native and Moscow university student – was standing with a group of
acquaintances when seven people got off a train and attacked them,
stabbing him once in the chest. The victim died on the spot.
The incident prompted sharp criticism from the Union of Russian
Armenians, a civic organization in Moscow.
“It’s not important what nationality the killed person is. This
concerns everyone. This is a problem for all of Russia,” union chief
Ara Abramian said on Ekho Moskvy radio. “If we have extremism and
nationalism, we should call these things exactly what they are and
then maybe these incidents won’t be repeated.”
Law enforcement authorities often classify attacks on minorities as
simple “hooliganism” with no racial motivation, fueling the anger of
Kremlin critics who say the government does little to stem hate crimes.
Several attacks on foreigners and ethnic minorities have occurred in
Russia in the past few weeks, and the country has seen a marked rise
in xenophobia and racism in recent years, with rights groups accusing
the government of inaction.
Assailants, often young skinheads or other nationalists, have committed
hundreds of attacks on foreigners from Africa, Asia and Latin America,
dark-skinned immigrants from former Soviet Central Asia and the
Caucasus Mountains region, and Jews. Dozens have died.
Rights activists say hate groups are emboldened by what they believe
is the authorities’ mild approach to prosecuting hate crimes, and
complain that neo-Nazi and other extremist literature and propaganda
is widely available on the streets and on the Internet.
Also Monday, Russian news agencies reported that a 25-year-old Tajik
man was killed and another 25-year-old Tajik was wounded after being
attacked in Moscow on Sunday. Prosecutors were investigating the
crime as a possible racial attack, the AP says.