Racism and Xenophobia in April 2012

This month, at least 15 people were injured in racist and neo-Nazi attacks, with one of them, a Yekaterinburg Kyrgyz, dying from wounds. The attacks took place in Moscow (five victims) and the Moscow region (two victims), the Republic of Bashkortostan (seven victims) and the Sverdlovsk region (one killed).

The results for the first four months of the year show that three people have been killed, and at least 54 injured as a result of such attacks in 12 regions of Russia.

April saw at least three acts of vandalism classified as motivated by hatred or neo-Nazi ideology. Including these, there have been 14 such incidents so far this year.

We remind readers that the number of neo-Nazi incidents traditionally spikes around April 20, Hitler’s birthday. This year was no exception. In addition to the emergence of neo-Nazi graffiti on walls and banners with Hitler’s portrait displayed at football matches, the day was marked by a parade in Nizhny Tagil, in the Sverdlovsk region. Groups of young people marched under the imperial tricolor. Others, carrying banners with swastikas, took part in “white wagon” actions, targeting people of non-Slavic appearance for attack on trains on Moscow-Tver, Moscow-Klin and Moscow-Konakovo routes.

The most significant public ultra-right event was a defense campaign for the benefit of Moscow Defense League leader Daniil Konstantinov, who is accused of domestic homicide. Members of the Russians movement, the ROD, and the Russian Jogging faction picketed outside Moscow Investigative Committee headquarters.

At least two convictions in cases of racist violence accounted for the hate motive this April, in Moscow and the Irkutsk region. Twelve people were convicted as a result of these cases, including 10 who were sentenced to various prison terms, one who received a suspended sentence, and one who was sentenced to life in prison. One case was a significant group trial, against the neo-Nazi group the Autonomous Military Terrorist Organization (ABTO).

We also take note of the sentence handed to Yuri Tikhomirov for the summer 2009 murder of antifascist Ilya Djaparidze. Tikhomirov had initially been charged under items “zh” and “l” of Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code, murder committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy motivated by hatred and hostility toward any social group. However, the charge was changed to Part 4 of Article 111 (intentional infliction of a grave injury involved the death of the victim by negligence). Unfortunately, at this point we are unable to verify whether the hate motive was considered in the sentence.

All these cases considered, 2012 has seen at least five convictions for racist violence that accounted for the hate motive. Seventeen people in Moscow and St. Petersburg and the Irkutsk region were convicted.

Nine sentences were issued for xenophobic propaganda this April, in Moscow and the Arkhangelsk, Chelyabinsk, Kaluga, Kirov, Kostroma, Sakhalin and Sverdlovsk regions. Ten people were convicted.

Since the beginning of 2012, xenophobic propaganda cases have delivered 25 judgments in 22 regions of Russia, with 33 individuals being convicted.

There was only one xenophobic vandalism sentence this month: an Orenburg vocational student was sentenced to a year of compulsory labor for xenophobic graffiti.

The Federal List of Extremist Materials was updated six times this month – on April 4, 19, 23, 25, 26 and 27. It now includes entries 1123-1157. Xenophobic videos – including one known by its title Execution of a Tajik and a Dag (a person from Dagestan); xenophobic poems, pamphlets and leaflets; an article about “Aryan civilization” on the racist web-portal Society of the White Tradition; Ukrainian nationalist materials; materials of modern Ukrainian historians in Ukrainian; and Islamic websites were all added to the list.