The figures are out, and they’re not quite as depressing as they first appear. The non-governmental Moscow Bureau for Human Rights reports that during last year 75 people were killed and 284 were injured as a result of attacks motivated by “aggressive xenophobia”. 2008, on the other hand, saw at least 128 murders and 394 injuries resulting from such belligerent nationalism, and in 2007 the stats were 74 and 317 respectively.
Most of the recorded assaults took place in Moscow, St Petersburg and Nizhniy Novgorod, but although Russians, Spaniards, Americans, and one Swiss individual suffered from such attacks, it was Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Tajiks who were the main targets. This the result of the often unwelcome, but nonetheless beneficial, influx of Central Asian immigrants to Russia’s cities.
Convictions for aggressively xenophobic crimes have risen dramatically (319 in 2009 compared to only 96 during 2007), with sentencing ranging from small fines all the way up to imprisonment. Four months of the latter punishment was, incidentally, handed down to a 20 year old student who was found guilty of distributing literature for the Islamic extremist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir – the very same Hizb ut-Tahrir for which the British government provides funding (yep, you couldn’t make it up).
Unfortunately, though, laws used to tackle the growing threat of militant and radical nationalism in Russia are frequently being mis-used and even ab-used. Attempts to place Pavel Bardin’s controversial film Russia 88 on the country’s “federal list of extremist materials” being a prime example of the latter.
Sigh . . . .
