Gypsies are "the most oppressed"

The Council of Europe assessed the trends in interethnic relations in Russia

The most oppressed national minority in Russia are the Roma - this was the conclusion reached by members of the Council of Europe Commission on Combating Racism and Intolerance, who presented their report on interethnic relations in our country on Tuesday in Moscow. “Gypsies, like Caucasians, are 20 times more likely to be stopped by law enforcement officers than people of Slavic appearance, suspecting them of some kind of illegal activity,” said commission vice-chairman Michael Head, speaking at a round table in which In addition to representatives of the Council of Europe, Russian human rights activists and Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin participated. “There are very strong anti-Gypsy sentiments in society,” Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy director of the SOVA information and analytical center, agreed with her European colleague. However, as representatives of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights noted, most often the victims of crimes on ethnic grounds are not Roma, but people from Central Asia and Caucasians - Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks and Azerbaijanis.

The most frequent attacks on foreigners are still recorded in the capital, with the Moscow region in second place. True, as Ms. Kozhevnikova noted, based on the research of the SOVA Center, we can talk about a significant improvement in the situation in Moscow. Thanks to the activities of law enforcement agencies, “the wave of violence was almost doubled” in comparison with 2007 data, which cannot be said, for example, about St. Petersburg .

In general, according to representatives of human rights organizations, several tens of thousands of “politically active” skinheads continue to operate in Russia, despite the fact that only a small percentage of these racist-minded young people are activists of any radical nationalist organizations.

Galina Kozhevnikova agreed with the conclusions of the MBHR, confirming that the main targets of skinheads, as in previous years, are people from Central Asia. According to her, they make up more than a third of the total number of victims - we are talking about those cases where it was proven that the crime was committed on the basis of national hatred. “As for statistics, since the beginning of the year there have already been 72 killed and about 300 wounded,” the deputy director of the SOVA center cited data.

At the same time, Kozhevnikova noted, the statistics may be incomplete, since recently “racists have been disguising their crimes as domestic offenses.” Sometimes beatings of representatives of the “wrong” nationality are presented as protecting girls from “in large numbers” of hooligans, added the deputy director of the SOVA center. And this is happening more and more often as the fight against xenophobia intensifies. “A new wave, a new call, is clearly being recorded, especially in Moscow, and precisely because many have already been arrested,” the human rights activist believes. “We think so because after a fairly long break, attacks have resumed, which are carried out according to completely open schemes described on the Internet.” As an example of one of these “developments,” the deputy head of the SOVA center cited attacks on guest workers on trains. “The racists did not kill or severely beat their victims, but at the same time they demonstratively “threw” them out of electric train cars at the nearest station, simultaneously explaining to passengers that they were defending the Russian people,” Ms. Kozhevnikova explained.

“Russian legislation is not yet systematically applied as it should be in relation to skinheads and nationalist groups,” said Michael Head, based on data from a report by the European Commission against Racism. In his opinion, Russia lacks a well-thought-out unified strategy to combat xenophobia and ethnic discrimination, and this “causes extreme concern” for the Council of Europe. European human rights activists are also concerned about the conditions in which migrants from the CIS countries live and work. “There are problems with the regulation of the status of refugees and stateless persons, as well as with discrimination in the fields of education, social services and employment,” the report notes.

At the same time, representatives of the Council of Europe admit that Russia has made progress in the fight against xenophobia. In particular, legislation on countering extremism and racism has been improved, and criminal cases are being initiated against active participants in radical organizations “in connection with propaganda of hatred.” Although, members of the commission note, criminal legislation is not always applied to the proper extent.

Mikhail MOSHKIN