The Official Report on the Russian Federation Concerning Discrimination and the Shadow Report Compiled by Russian NGOs were Presented at the United Nations CERD

On July 31 and August 4, 2008, at session number 73 of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), there were examined the combined 18th and 19th periodic reports on the Russian Federation concerning the fulfillment of its commitments to the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), covering the period from February 2002 to July 2006. The text of the official report is available on the CERD website under the flag of the Russian Federation (PDF format).

The Russian delegation, headed by the Deputy Minister of Regional Development Maxim Travnikov, consisted of 19 people, representing the Ministry of Regional Development, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture, and the General Prosecutor's Office.

In accordance with the United Nations CERD procedures, a shadow report was prepared by the Human Rights Centre "Memorial' and the Information and Analytical Centre "Sova', in collaboration with the Civic Assistance Committee (Moscow), the Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights (Moscow), the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, Siberia and Far East, the Foundation "For Civil Society' (Moscow), the "Tajikistan' Foundation (Moscow), and the Antidiscrimination Centre "Memorial' (Saint-Petersburg). This shadow report was supported by more than 30 Russian NGOs.

Unfortunately, due to schedule problems, the Human Rights Centre "Memorial' and the Information and Analytical Centre "Sova' could not take part in the preliminary meeting with the representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of the Ministry of Regional Development, organized on July 21 by the Center of International Collaboration.

The shadow report was passed to the committee members and was presented in a briefing which took place at the Wilson Palace on July 31, 2008, before the examination of the official report for Russia. To the briefing took part Alexander Osipov (HRC "Memorial'), Galina Kozhevnikova ("Sova' Center), Yuri Dzhibladze and Anna Sevortyan (Centre for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights), Elena Ryabinina (Civic Assistance Committee), Olga Abramenko and Marina Arefyeva (Antidiscrimination Centre "Memorial', St. Petersburg), Pavel Sulyandziga (Russian Association of Indigenous People of the North, Siberia and the Far East) and Gulvayra Shermatova (Informational and Educational Network of Indigenous People "Lyoravetlan'). Also present at the briefing were several committee members, including the speaker on Russia Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos, who assigned a number of questions meant to elaborate on the position of Russian NGOs and which explain the fundamental divergences between the official and the shadow report.

The official report on the Russian Federation, with refinements and additions as of mid-2008, was presented at the CERD session on July 31. The most important goal of the speaker - the head of the Russian delegation M. Travnikov - was to answer the preliminary questions of the Committee related to the implementation of the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, the increase in racist violence, and the usage of hate speech in the Russian public and political arena.

The Russian representatives noted that:

• the international conventions relevant for Russian law enforcement and may be implemented directly in court trial;

• the government sees as one of the main methods to counteract xenophobia the promotion of tolerance in forms such as interethnic festivals;

• the prosecution of extremists was practically impossible before the amendments to the Criminal Code in 2003 (which is inaccurate to say the least and contradicts other theses of the official report).

After the end of the Russian delegation's intervention, the official speaker on Russia, Mr. Sitsilianos and the Committee members posed an entire series of questions to the Russian delegation. In particular, they were interested in concrete examples of the implementation of the ICERD in Russian law courts, in the statistics of judicial verdicts on racist violence and the official statistics on victims of racist violence, in the problems connected with the manifestations of xenophobia from the part of the Cossacks, in the ethnic discrimination of Meskhetian Turks, in the issues of the destruction of Roma settlements and the segregation of Roma children in schools, and also in a series of issues connected with the discrimination of indigenous peoples.

During the consultation, the members of the committee proved a high level of information on, and a great deal of emotional interest in, the problems of racism and ethnic discrimination in the Russian Federation. We wish to note the extremely emotional intervention of one of the committee members, who inquired if a foreign student arriving in Russia can feel safe, and if he is given upon arrival the :Protect yourself; leaflet - an example given by the Russian delegation as a positive element of the fight against racism.

On August 4, 2008, the second session of the committee on the examination of the report on Russia took place, and the Russian delegation answered the questions posed during the first session. The non-confrontational approach of the Russian delegation to the opinion of Russian NGOs cited by the committee must be noted.

To some of the questions the committee could not obtain satisfactory answers. For instance, as an example of direct application of international law in courts only one episode from 1992 was mentioned. Russian officials said that there are no statistics of such implementations, even in the Supreme Court (even without statistics it is known that direct reference to the conventions and even to the Constitution is a rare occurrence in judicial practice). The Russian delegation could also not answer the questions about the spread of racist violence and the number of "guilty' verdicts concerning this matter, since the statistical methods do not allow for their differentiation from the total number of "anti-extremist' issues which include very diverse occurrences, including some even not illegal at all.

More details on the Russian delegation's answers to the CERD questions are presented in written form, which is expected to be issued this month. It will include also the concluding observations of the CERD.

A press conference was organized in Geneva by the representatives of Russian NGOs concerning the conclusions of the examination of the report, within which were mentioned the most important points connected with the manifestations of racism and discrimination, as well as the situation of NGOs in Russia. It was also possible to organize several meetings with representatives of different structures of the United Nations.

The full text of the shadow report will be published on our website within the next few days in both Russian and English. Below we give only a very brief summary of the report.

The joint Report of RF non-governmental organizations covers the period of 2003 - 2007. Within these years the situation in the country was changing rapidly, and the general trends meant strengthening of factors conductive to discrimination in combination with deterioration of conditions for combating it.

The problems of racist violence, all forms of discrimination and hate speech have grown dramatically in scope and acuteness. Racial discrimination in various forms and manifestations has been increasingly gaining public approval and notably support from public officials. Simultaneously, hate speech previously used by marginal authors and organizations, is now widely perceived as something acceptable.

There are a number of mechanisms within the Russian legal system for combating racial discrimination and incitement of ethnic hatred. The Constitution guarantees equality of rights and freedoms and these guarantees are reproduced in the current legislation. The Constitution and laws also contain general guarantees of judicial protection of human and civil rights and freedoms. In 2003, the federal law for the first time officially defined the term "discrimination'; however, this definition is hardly consistent with the requirements of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

In practice, the state has apparently become more active in opposing racist violence and hate speech. Top officials have made a number of statements in which they acknowledged the reality of ethnically motivated mass violence and incitement of racial hatred, and condemned such phenomena. The number of criminal cases on charges of incitement of racial and ethnic hatred has increased significantly. Governmental authorities become more and more active in using such tools as suspension or termination of mass media outlets or NGOs for their usage of hate speech. However, such counteraction remains quite selective.

However, the concept of these activities has changed substantively. It is defined as "counteraction to extremist activities' and develops exclusively as the fight against "extremism', thus dragging the issue into political domain, leading to selective and discretionary application of law and shifting the focus of preventing and eliminating discrimination from protection of individual's rights and dignity to a fight against those whom the state deems its opponents.

This approach undermines the effectiveness of potentially powerful mechanisms for combating ethnic violence and hate speech. A more negative effect results from the ambiguous position of the state which encourages various manifestations of radical nationalism and racial discrimination.

Some positive changes should be mentioned also. The situation in zone of the Ossetian-Ingush conflict in North Caucasus has improved significantly; the problem of Ingush internally displaced persons is close to being resolved. The fabrication of criminal cases by planting drugs or ammunition on people belonging to certain minorities has become drastically smaller in scope. One can also hardly assess as a positive shift the virtual disappearance of discrimination in granting the statuses of refugees and forced migrants since the government stopped granting these statuses. The problem of Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar Krai has decreased in scope, but this can be hardly considered a positive achievement since the only cause was the emigration of most Turks to the USA.

At the same time most problems of the previous period are still persistent. As before, legal remedies against racist discrimination are basically weak and really inefficient. The opportunity to employ them exists rather in theory than in established practice. This can be explained by a number of factors, including the disparity of substantive and procedural legal norms, drawbacks of the legislative acts in force, the lack of judicial and enforcement practice.

A significant factor is also the lack of official and public interest in the very issue of combating ethnic discrimination and general lack of public demand for the relevant legal mechanisms. The state and society express their concern only about encroachments on public order and political stability, but not against individual's rights and dignity. The state prefers to address the problems in terms of the "fight against extremism', "interethnic conflict', "regulation of migration' and, hence to neglect and hide the very theme of discrimination.

All in all one can conclude that the state does not make sufficient effort to effectively combat discrimination and to establish relevant remedies against it. On the contrary, governmental bodies systematically discriminate on ethnic ground against certain categories of population or encourage discrimination. Ethnic Chechens outside Chechnya are systematically discriminated against, persecuted and subjected to restriction of rights; The nation-wide campaign of persecutions against Georgian citizens and ethnic Georgians raised particular concern. A significant problem is also discriminatory treatment by law-enforcement agencies of ethnic minorities, primarily people originating from the Caucasus and Central Asia as well as the Roma people. In fact, the country faces an anti-migrant campaign launched by the state, which results in discretionary administrative restrictions of foreigners' rights and contributes greatly to the general growth of xenophobia. Since 2005 a wave of demolition of Romani villages and evictions of Roma people swept over the country. The existing legislation on the legal status of foreign citizens and registration by place of residence and sojourn encourages discriminatory behaviour of the enforcing agencies and officials.