June 2008. Monthly summary

In June 2008, no less than 7 attacks of racist and neo-nationalist character were recorded, as the result of which no less than 13 people suffered. Like in May, let us underline that most likely we are not dealing with a real reduction in the activity of the skinheads but with lack of information. In June, incidents were recorded in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd, Lipetsk, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Yaroslavl.

In the first six months of 2008, 255 people suffered from similar attacks, and 58 of them perished. Incidents were registered in 27 regions of Russia. Within the same period of the year 2007, 351 people suffered, and 49 of them lost their lives. We see thus that after the splash of violence at the beginning of the year, the number of reports about the victims sharply declined.

Moscow (35 killed and 96 injured) and St. Petersburg (12 killed and 19 injured) remain the most important centers of violence.

A new phenomenon, which became noticeable in June, consists of the actions of Caucasian young people who either consciously incite fights with the adherents of ultra-right ideas, or willingly accept the provocative calls of the latter. In June there occurred at least one such fight, in Mitino, the North-West of Moscow. Still, the communications about some incidents look more like conscious attempts to present ordinary conflicts as justified by nationalism. In principle, such groups of Caucasian young people were recorded already in 2007 (it suffices to mention the fight in the Slavianskaya Square which occurred on June 22 that year). Provocative communications concerning the preparation of such fights could have been encountered in the spring of this year on the Internet. However, in the majority of the cases, it is difficult to discern among similar statements which is a provocation, a fabrication, or a conscious distortion of the facts. Nevertheless, the old fears of experts, that the inadequate prosecution of xenophobia and racist violence would lead to the radicalization and nationalistically motivated aggression of a part of the potential or real victims of Nazi-skinheads, were proven to be true. Now we can affirm that these groups do exist, and that they associate according to their region of origin and/or phenotype (Caucasus Region - Caucasian appearance) - that is, according to the same principles on which they are identified by the Nazi-skinheads. At the same time, they copy the behavior of the neo-Nazis (provoking conflict, filming it with the mobile phone video camera, placing the recordings on the Internet).

In June, a guilty verdict against seven people was given on the charge of a group murder motivated by nationalist hatred: on June 30, 2008, in Yekaterinburg, the convicted members of the "Sieg-88" group were given long prison sentences (from 6 to 10 years).

In all, since the beginning of 2008, no less than 12 sentences against 39 people in 12 regions of the country were issued on counts of violent crimes qualified as crimes of hatred.

In matters concerning the propaganda of hatred, no less than two guilty sentences were given (one in the Astrakhan region and the other in Blagoveshchensk), against four people.

In June 2008, the federal list of extremist materials was replenished. At the end of the month, it already included 151 titles of materials considered to be extremist in nature. In the number of materials included in the last adjustment of the list, let us note the presence of the videotape of the neo-Nazi murder of the natives of Tadzhikistan and Dagestan, which appeared on the Internet in August 2007. This month, law-enforcement agencies acknowledged the case as murder and identified the killer.