from the June 23, 2006 edition
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Moscow cops stop mostly minorities
Racial profiling study on Metro shows minorities are 22 times more
likely to be singled out than whites.
By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
MOSCOW
Levon, who declines to give his last name, says his visit to Moscow has
been a nonstop nightmare of police harassment and extortion, especially
whenever he enters Moscow’s underground transit system, the Metro.
"The police always check me, and often they detain me claiming my
papers are false," says the swarthy, middle-aged Armenian sports
trainer. He’s spent the past three months in Moscow caring for an
ailing family member. "The police only let me go when I pay a bribe,
usually about 500 rubles ($18). It happens at least twice a week. Every
time I go outside, I feel like I’m heading for some unpleasantness."
Stories like Levon’s abound in Moscow, where anecdotal evidence – and
a new study – show police routinely single out dark-skinned migrants
from former Soviet republics as well as citizens from Russia’s own
southern regions for document checks that often lead to detention,
harassment, and paying of bribes.
Still experts say they are shocked by the results of a new study
showing the scope of racial profiling by police in the Moscow Metro. It
found that non-Slavs – are almost 22 times more likely to be stopped
than those who look like fair-skinned ethnic Russians.
By comparison, a similar survey in the US found that blacks traveling
on a New Jersey highway were almost five times more frequently targeted
by state police than whites.
"In effect, any non-Slav can expect to be treated like an illegal
alien by Moscow police," says Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy director
of the Sova Center, a nonprofit group that works on civil rights
issues. "The growing xenophobia in society is bad enough, but it’s
clearly much worse in the police. Something urgently needs to be done."
Experts say the study results are particularly disturbing
at a time when hate crimes by skinhead and neo-Nazi groups are
rising. Ms. Kozhevnikova, whose organization tracks ultra-nationalist
activities, says that 18 people have been killed and 147 injured in
racist attacks in Russian cities so far this year.
The United Nations special rapporteur on racism, Doudou Diene, told
a Moscow press conference last week that Russia is suffering from a
post-Communist "ideological vacuum" which aids the proliferation of
xenophobic and racist ideas. During his visit to Russia, he met with
resident Africans, Roma, and other minorities who told him they are
regular targets of violence.
The study, in which monitors observed more than 1,500 police document
checks at 15 Metro stations over a five-month period in 2005, concluded
that Moscow police are engaged in "massive ethnic profiling." The
practice is unlawful discrimination, a violation of the equal rights of
citizens under the Russian Constitution and the country’s international
commitments. For example, the United Nations Race Convention prohibits
racial discrimination with respect to "freedom of movement," and
guarantees the "right to equal treatment" by judicial officials.
Anita Soboleva, executive director of Jurix, the lawyers’ group
that conducted the survey with funds from George Soros’ Open Society
Institute, says "Police ethnic profiling reflects social attitudes
against people who look ‘different.’ This racist approach appears to
be deeply ingrained in police procedures."
While many of the estimated 3 million "migrant" workers in Moscow come
from former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Asia – and even as
far afield as China and Vietnam – many others are members of Russia’s
own 20 million-strong Muslim community. The study suggests that Moscow
police treat all non-Slavs alike, whether Russian citizens or not. "The
danger here is that non-Slavs are made to feel themselves second-class
citizens in the capital of their own country," says Olga Schedrina,
a researcher at the government’s Institute of Sociology in Moscow.
At one downtown Moscow Metro stop covered in the study, non-Slavs were
85 times more likely to be stopped than fair-skinned people. "We’re
very concerned that police conduct toward non-Slavs… will reinforce
social prejudices. People think, ‘if the police do it, that must be
right,’ " Ms. Soboleva says.
Police and state officials have been given copies of the study,
released this month, but have yet to comment on it. The authors say
that identification-checking sweeps through Metro stations not only
raise social tensions, they appear to be a misuse of resources in
the battle against crime and terrorism: Only 3 percent of the 1,500
checks witnessed by survey monitors found any kind of infraction,
in most cases very minor ones.
"We hope to dialogue with the police about this, because it
seems certain that their energies could be better spent," says
Soboleva. "Defenders of police practices usually say this approach
is because of the high rate of ethnic crime, but no statistics back
this up. Nor is there any evidence that these document checks of
the population have ever slowed down any terrorist actions. It’s not
clear they have any good purpose at all."
Russian police have the right to check anyone’s ID, and hold him
or her for up to three hours while documents are verified. Even the
slightest problem, such as lack of Moscow residential registration,
can lead to detention of up to 48 hours.
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