Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Alvaro Gil-Robles on the rise of xenophobia in Russia

On April 20, 2005, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Alvaro Gil-Robles, presented a report to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on his visits to Russia in July and September 2004, in which significant attention was paid to the problems of racism and xenophobia.

In his opinion, "xenophobia and what accompanies it has become an everyday reality of this country - an expression of an increasingly ardent nationalism. And if there is traditionally good agreement between various ethnic minorities, the machinations of certain groups or individuals undermine the very foundations of such agreement. "

This phenomenon can be resisted only by consolidating the efforts of society and the state. However, this does not happen in Russia.

Alvaro Gil-Robles noted that, according to representatives of a number of Russian NGOs, “some heads of law enforcement or prosecutorial offices sometimes minimize the seriousness of these cases. Other NGO representatives provided us with information about discrimination and violence by law enforcement officials in their work against individuals outwardly belonging to minorities or ethnic groups, who are often the victims of attacks of a xenophobic nature .

He noted that despite the measures taken by the authorities at various levels to overcome xenophobic sentiments, they are clearly insufficient.

At the moment, the main objects of xenophobia in Russia are, first of all, people from the region of the North Caucasus and Central Asia. This, of course, is connected with the ongoing hostilities in Chechnya. However, as the European Ombudsman emphasized, manifestations of xenophobia xenophobia are not of a pronounced causal nature: "Xenophobia affects members of minorities with a pronounced "southern" appearance, migrants, foreigners and members of the Jewish community" .

Alvaro Gil-Robles paid much attention to how xenophobic sentiments spread in society. These are the actions of small nationalist groups distributing xenophobic leaflets, these are “preventive measures to combat crime taken on the ground based on false or simplistic accusations, for example, of all Roma and Tajiks that they are drug dealers, or that all Meskhetian Turks are criminals" , this is the transmission of negative ethnic stereotypes through the media.

It was noted that the Ombudsman was greatly criticized by the activities of law enforcement agencies: “It seems that racism in general is manifested primarily in the behavior of law enforcement agencies. Some representatives of these agencies arrest people only for external signs and commit acts of violence against them. with terrorism, the general atmosphere after the events of September 11, and the tragedy in Beslan very often serve as a pretext for such actions, which are clearly racist .

On April 29, 2005, Moscow News published a report on this report, which notes that the pathos of the report by Alvaro Gil-Robles almost completely coincided with the spirit and letter of another report prepared by PACE deputies David Atkinson (Great Britain) and Rudolf Bindig (Germany) - about the incomplete moral and legal compliance of Russia with the title of a member of the Council of Europe.

Sources

• Silence "guys" // Moscow News. 2005. September 29.