ETHNIC CONFLICTS IN RUSSIA BECOME LARGER AND BLOODIER WITH EVERY YEAR
Pravda
Oct 10 2007
Russia
Ethnic conflicts have become a common event in present-day Russia.
The bloodiest clashes between ethnic Russians and so-called
individuals of Caucasian nationalities occur in March-April and
August-September. As a rule, such conflicts start with one single
murder, which triggers massive pogroms against Russian Caucasians.
A young Russian man was killed in a night club in the town of Kletskaya
(the Volgograd region of Russia) in August of 2000. His funeral service
quickly turned into a mass meeting of local citizens who demanded all
Chechens be expelled from the town. The funeral ended with spontaneous
arsons of houses where people of Chechen nationality lived.
Cossacks caused serious damage to Chechen property in Russia’s
Rostov region in March 2001 after a massive fight in the village
of Bogoroditskoye.
About 200 people participated in a pogrom at a Moscow market on April
21, 2001. Ten people suffered various injuries as a result of the
attack; most of them were vendors from Azerbaijan.
The next massacre took place on October 30 2001. A crowd of 300 young
men wielding metal bars attacked street vendors of Caucasian origin
at three markets in Moscow. Four were killed in the attack, over 80
were injured.
Ethnic conflicts continued to intensify in 2002. A massive fight
between Russians and Chechens with the participation of about 400
men took place in May of that year in the town of Chastozerye, the
Kurgan region. Another conflict took place in the town of Uglich,
the Yaroslav region, after Chechens killed a Russian teenager at a
local dance party. In the Moscow region, young men attacked several
Armenian families and asked the local authorities to clean the town
of non-Russians after an elderly Armenian man stabbed a 26-year-old
Igor Samolyuk in a bar.
Two massive fights took place in the city of Nalchik in September
2003. The local population fought with Chechen students. Over 50 were
injured in the fight of 200-300 people. Everything started with a
dispute in a local bus, when several Chechens brutally beat a local
Russian resident.
About 200 Cossacks smashed several shops and cafes owned by natives
of Armenia in the city of Novorossiisk in March 2005.
The year 2006 marked the crucial point in the history of ethnic
conflicts in Russia. About 540 people suffered as a result of
ethnic strife and national hostility; 54 of them were killed,
official statistics says. National diasporas in Russia have their
own information. According to the Migration Service of Tajikistan,
206 natives of the republic were killed in Russia in 2006.
Young nationalists blew up a bomb on Moscow’s largest market on
August 21, 2006 killing 13 people. Another large-scale ethnic conflict
took place in the town of Kondopoga the Karelia Republic, when local
residents attacked Caucasian town-fellows.
Specialists analyzing the recurrence of ethnic clashes in Russia came
to conclusion that most of the conflicts occur at the end of summer
and in the beginning of autumn.