RUSSIA CRACKING DOWN ON BRUTAL HATE CRIMES
The Houston Chronicle
July 13, 2008 Sunday
2 STAR EDITION
The attacks on foreigners may have decreased, but manner is more lethal
MOSCOW – Artur Ryno had a knife and was looking to kill foreigners. He
slipped into the space between two buildings near downtown Moscow
and walked toward a janitor who was standing alone in the night air
in April 2007. By the time the frenzy of hacks and thrusts was over,
Khairullo Sadykov, a Tajik, lay crumpled on the ground with dozens
of stab wounds.
About three hours later, Ryno encountered Karin Abramyan, an Armenian
businessman, and pulled out his knife. Abramyan’s body later was
found with knife wounds to the head, stomach and chest.
Human rights groups say that Ryno, who was 17 when he was arrested,
is just one of an untold number of thugs who’ve hunted migrant laborers
and immigrants on the streets of Russia.
In the first six months of this year, 69 people were killed in
ethnic and racially motivated attacks across Russia, just below the
74 recorded for all of last year, according to the Moscow Bureau for
Human Rights. Another organization that tracks the killings, the Sova
Center, counts 59 killed for the first half of 2008, well above 2007,
when it counted 83 murders for the whole year.
Because Russian security forces don’t release comprehensive statistics
on the attacks, there’s no standardized method of tracking the
violence, which usually targets darker-skinned migrants from former
Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus region. Human rights
groups rely in large part on reports from the field and news accounts.
Dangerous subways
The murders have centered on the nation’s capital, where
ultranationalist groups are growing more vicious, many people say. The
groups post videos on the Internet showing random attacks: Packs of
young Russians ambush non-Slavic-looking men, kicking and punching
them until they fall to the ground, cowering but still alive.
Subway stops and the areas near them often are chosen because they
offer a quick escape, said Vladilen Bokov, the head of the Moscow city
department on inter-ethnic relations. "You can flee easily. They make
it a kind of entertainment … as a sort of fun," Bokov said.
In some cases, the teenagers and men carrying out the beatings have
been affiliated with ultranationalist groups that sponsor "fitness
clubs" or youth meetings that often offer training in hand-to-hand
combat and include members with swastika tattoos. It’s a culture that
scorns "chyorni," the Russian word for black, which many Russians
use in various forms to refer to all people with darker skin. While
there’s no proof of a connection with the violence, the groups
virulently oppose the influx of migrants to Russia.
After years of relatively little action, the Russian government is
taking the problem more seriously, cooperating with migrant-advocacy
groups and prosecuting street gangs that hunt foreigners, said Gavkhar
Dzhurayeva, the head of the Migration and Law Center, a Moscow-based
migrant-worker rights and legal aid organization.
As a result, Dzhurayeva said, the number of attacks has dropped as
the gangs go underground, but the manner in which people are attacked
"has become more demonstrative. It has become more cruel."
After his arrest, Ryno confessed to participating in 26 or 27 attacks
on non-Russians during an eight-month rampage from 2006 to 2007 that
killed 20 people, according to his attorney, Yuri Yefimenkov.
Attackers charged
Russian officials later charged Ryno and another teenager – who
allegedly was with him during the Sadykov and Abramyan killings – with
leading a group of seven other youths accused of 20 murders and 12
attempted murders. While Russian authorities wouldn’t allow McClatchy
to interview the teens, who await indictment, Ryno’s attorney described
details of the killings based on court records and his conversations
with Ryno.
Leaders of two ultranationalist groups predicted that the violence
will worsen.
Fighting the future
"I don’t fight any specific person, but I fight the possibility that
Russia could be a Muslim country in 20 years," said Dmitry Dyomushkin,
the head of the Slavic Union, one of the ultranationalist groups. "You
know, there are a lot of clashes now, and one big conflict might be
enough to spread the fighting across Russia."
Dyomushkin denies any connection with violence, but he said that Ryno
and others from his group attended Slavic Union meetings.
Dyomushkin’s group and the Movement Against Illegal Immigration,
known by its Russian initials DPNI, sponsor or provide trainers to
"fitness clubs" that teach young Russians close-quarters combat skills
and, in some cases, basic lessons in handling explosives, ostensibly
to ready them for service in the military. Neither group would allow
McClatchy to visit the clubs.
"We try to teach them the basics of staying secure, but we cannot
guarantee that a small number of them won’t use the skills we teach
them to commit crimes," said Alexander Belov, the leader of the
DPNI. "It’s the same as accusing a knife manufacturer of something
when someone uses their knife to kill someone instead of cutting meat."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
