RUSSIAN SKINHEAD ATTACKS INCREASE IN WAKE OF GEORGIAN WAR
Paul Goble
Georgiandaily
October 07, 2008
NY
After a decline in the first nine months of 2008, the number of
Russian skinhead attacks on ethnic minorities increased last month,
in part because many non-Russians returned to cities in the Russian
Federation after holidays but also in part because of the anti-minority
sentiment whipped up during the Russian invasion of Georgia.
Last week, the Moscow Human Rights Bureau released its report for
the first three quarters of this year. It found that there had been a
decline in the number of attacks on ethnic and religious minorities
for the first eight months compared to the same period in 2007,
a finding that Russian news outlets celebrated.
But the Moscow Bureau reported that the number of attacks, deaths
and wound inflicted, and what it described as "terrorist attacks"
on minorities, such as blowing up of a Moscow cafe frequented by
minorities or a firebombing of an Orthodox Church in Karelia, had
all gone up during the last month of that reporting period.
During that month, the bureau said, there had been 27 xenophobic
attacks which had resulted in 11 deaths and 34 injuries. The most
frequently attacked groups were Azesrbaijanis, Daghestanis, Armenians,
Uzbeks, Ingush, Tajiks, Chinese, people from the Arab world, Russians
and Japanese
The presence of Russians on this list, the bureau’s experts said,
"in a majority of cases" reflects not an outbreak of russophobia but
rather the involvement of ethnic Russian skinheads who have suffered
injuries or deaths when they have attacked members of ethnic or
religious minorities.
In an article published in "Gazeta" yesterday, the bureau’s Semen
Charniy pointed out that the earlier decline so many Russian outlets
have noted was the product of the departure of many non-Russians to
their homelands over the summer and that the increase in September
followed their return to Russian cities.
But Charniy stressed one aspect of the Moscow Bureau’s report that had
received less attention earlier. The violence of skinhead attacks on
minorities is increasing: "If earlier, most of the cases involved
beatings," he noted, "the now, the main goal [of the skinheads]
is not to beat but to kill."
And President Dmitry Medvedev pointed out that Russian officials
"are beginning to encounter [such attacks] in places and for reasons
about which [no one] had thought before," an indication that xenophobic
attacks are spreading and being directed at groups beyond those, like
"persons of Caucasus nationality" who had been the primary objects
of hate crimes earlier.
Charniy did not link the recent decline to Moscow’s stepped up
enforcement program – something Medvedev is committed to doing –
or the upsurge to the nationalist anger toward minorities during and
after the Russian military action in Georgia. But both are clearly
part of the explanation.
On the one hand, the bureau reported, 19 individuals were convicted
of hate crimes. And on the other, anti-immigrant groups, encouraged
by anti-Georgian messages in the Russian media, stepped up their
activities in August and September against many groups but not
Georgians.
Three things are striking about this report and the reaction it has
generated. First, skinheads are becoming more active and violent
rather than less across Russia. Second, they are being energized by
the government’s own nationalistic propaganda even as Moscow promises
and in some cases acts against them.
And third – and this is by far the most important aspect of this
situation – Russian skinheads whose passions are inflamed about a
particular ethnic or religious minority as a result of media coverage
or an actual development may very well strike out at members of other
readily identified minorities rather than the one they say they are
angry at.
Thus, as German Pastor Niemuller reminded the world 70 years ago, no
one can feel comfortable when radical nationalists attack minorities
because when the former get away with beating or killing the latter,
the members of ever more groups are at risk, however safe they assume
themselves to be.