PROSECUTORS CLASSIFY ATTACKS IN MOSCOW AS HATE CRIMES
By Anton Troianovski

Concord Monitor, NH
July 4 2006

Stabbings Initially Were Labeled ‘Hooliganism’

Prosecutors in Russia said yesterday that they are investigating the
weekend stabbings of five ethnic minorities as hate crimes.

Four ethnic Armenians and one Azerbaijani were attacked by about
15 assailants at a subway station Saturday, said Sergei Marchenko,
a spokesman for the Moscow prosecutor’s office. The office initially
said only two people were hurt in the attack and that it was being
investigated as "hooliganism," not a hate crime.

Russia has seen a wave of hate crimes in recent years, with hundreds
of attacks reported, including many on dark-skinned immigrants from
former Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus Mountains region.

Rights activists say hate groups are emboldened by authorities’ mild
approach to prosecuting hate crimes, with neo-Nazi and extremist
literature sold freely.

Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian condemned the attacks
and urged Russia to do more to head off a rising tide of violent
xenophobia.

"This is a widespread and continuing phenomenon in Russia,"Oskanian
said. "The Russian authorities need to take serious steps to thwart it,
otherwise such incidents will be a serious threat to Russia itself."

Meanwhile, three suspects in the Saturday stabbing of a Kazakh
citizen were arrested for a racially motivated crime, the Interfax
news agency reported.

Also Saturday, two Uzbek citizens were hospitalized with multiple
stab wounds after being attacked in southwest Moscow, Interfax said.

Alexander Brod, who heads the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, said
the surge in attacks might be tied to two high-profile conferences
that opened in the capital yesterday before a summit of the Group of
Eight major industrialized nations that begins next week in St.
Petersburg.

"On the eve of two such important events, it’s quite possible that
Moscow’s nationalist radicals demonstrated their aggressiveness to
announce their presence," Brod said.

Interfax quoted an Armenian community leader, Ara Abramian, as saying
the attacks were "a direct provocation before the G-8 meeting,"
and sharply criticized Moscow law enforcement for failing to prevent
such assaults.

"I can’t understand how big groups of skinheads can walk around the
Moscow metro and freely attack people with (knives) in the center of
Moscow in broad daylight," he said.