MOSCOW FOREIGN STUDENTS TOLD TO STAY IN AS RACIST ATTACKS RISE OVER HITLER’S BIRTHDAY

Buzzle, CA
April 20 2007

Russia’s most prestigious medical institute has told its foreign
students to stay indoors for three days because of fears they may be
attacked by skinheads celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday.

The IM Sechenov Medical Academy in Moscow yesterday advised its 2,000
non-Russian students to remain in their dormitories until tomorrow.

The institute’s deputy dean said the extraordinary measures were
necessary because of the risk of attack by ultra-nationalist thugs,
who are traditionally more active around Hitler’s birthday – which
falls on April 20.

"We believe that the best form of medicine is prevention," Sergei
Baronov, deputy dean in the faculty of foreign students, told
the Guardian. "I don’t think the problem in Russia is worse than
anywhere else. But there are a small group of people who are bent
on provocation."

Foreign students are also being taught self-defence and lectures have
been cancelled as security has increased. Officially the shutdown is
described as a fire drill.

"I was shocked when I first heard it," Vijay Ganason, 23, a medical
student from Malaysia, said. "Basically we are staying in. If you
want you can go out. But it’s at your own risk. We’ve filled our
drawers with dried food."

Other students, however, said they welcomed the move.

"We are finally getting a rest and some sleep," said Vishnu Ravee,
21, also from Malaysia. "We’ve been revising very hard and have exams
in a few weeks."

Next door the smell of Indian cooking came from the communal kitchen;
in an adjacent room another medical student slept on a sofa.

The students come from 82 countries – including Britain but mostly
from Malaysia and India – and they live in a renovated 19th century
block not far from campus.

In recent years there has been a steep rise in the number of racist
and xenophobic attacks across Russia. The victims are often migrant
workers from former Soviet Union countries.

Yesterday police said they had detained five suspects in connection
with the latest race stabbings in Moscow, one of which was recorded
on a video camera.

Khairullo Sadykov, 26, a street cleaner from Tajikistan, was stabbed
35 times on Monday evening outside an apartment building near a metro
station in eastern Moscow, a prosecutor, Sergei Vasilovsky, said. He
died at the scene.

According to Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, two teenagers, thought to
be skinheads wearing "high, laced-up army style boots", were captured
on video allegedly carrying out the murder. They were later arrested,
the paper said.

In another attack an Armenian businessman, Karen Abramyan, 46,
was brutally stabbed 20 times also on Monday evening, in south-west
Moscow. He died of his injuries in hospital. Three young men were
arrested.

"After he was taken to hospital the victim said he was attacked because
of his ethnicity, saying the young men were shouting racial epithets,"
a police source told Interfax news agency.

Last year 53 people were killed and 460 injured in racially motivated
attacks, according to the human rights centre Sova. Activists say
that the authorities are in denial about the problem and regularly
classify race attacks as the lesser crime of hooliganism. Courts also
impose lenient sentences, they say.

"It is nice that the university is taking care of us, but on the
other hand it’s absurd that our freedom is being limited because
of some militant groups," said Liah Ganeline, a second-year medical
student from Israel. "In a normal democratic country the authorities
don’t obey the interests of these groups, but on the contrary, law
enforcement forces protect people from them."

She said that students were aware of the real reason for the lockdown –
which has happened over the past two or three years – and that someone
had scrawled the word "skinheads" over the announcement of the measure
posted in a dormitory.

Founded in 1758, Moscow’s medical academy is famous in Russia for
its talented students and rigorous teaching. The institute has 8,000
students studying medicine, dentistry and pharmacology.

Backstory

Russia has been gripped in recent years by a series of brutal racist
attacks on foreigners, with at least 53 people murdered last year
alone. The victims are typically migrant workers in low-paid jobs from
the former Soviet Union. But there are also regular attacks on students
and on Jews. The violence appears to spike around Hitler’s birthday,
on April 20, when foreign embassies receive anonymous emails demanding
that all "non Russians" leave or face death. The attacks occur in all
of Russia’s big cities where immigration and nationalism are on the
rise. The situation is especially bad in St Petersburg and in Voronesh,
a city south of Moscow with a large student population. Critics say
the Kremlin is too lenient towards far-right groups.