September 2008. Results of the month

In September 2008, at least 27 people were injured in racist and neo-Nazi attacks, 5 of whom died (in September 2007, 5 people also died and 19 were injured). Thus, we see a slight increase in the number of victims compared to last year. In addition to Moscow, attacks were recorded in September in Arkhangelsk, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk, the Kaluga region, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. It is significant that in St. Petersburg - after the statement of V. Matvienko that the number of racist crimes in the city is decreasing and the warning to Novaya Gazeta in Petersburg for an indignant article about the anti-Georgian declarations of the DPNI - no reports of racist attacks have been recorded.

It should be noted that in late August - early September, several explosions occurred in Moscow, at least one of which has serious grounds to suspect a hate motive.

In total, since the beginning of the year, as a result of incidents that occurred in 35 Russian regions, at least 360 people were injured, 73 of them died. In 2007, during the same period, 513 people suffered, 64 of whom died.

People from Central Asia remain the main targets of violence (at least 42 people have been killed and at least 83 injured since the beginning of the year).

The end of September was marked by a series of attacks by Nazi skinheads on representatives of youth subcultures associated with anti-fascists, but not directly active in the antifa movement. The attacks, as a result of which at least 12 people were injured, took place in Arkhangelsk, Tolyatti, Izhevsk, Yekaterinburg and a number of other Russian cities.

In September 2008, at least two convictions related to racist violence were handed down, in Tambov and Moscow. The Moscow sentence to the Kolinichenko (Kalinichenko) group - extremely light compared to the severity of the crimes they are accused of (two murders and several attempted murders) - seriously stands out from the general trend towards adequate punishment for such crimes. The defendants received from 3 to 10 years in prison, while the prosecution quite rightly, in our opinion, asked for a much more severe punishment (from 22 to 5 years).

In total, at least 18 convictions for violent racist crimes have been handed down since the beginning of the year, resulting in 68 convictions.

Over the past month, at least three sentences for hate propaganda (Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and one more justified sentence for incitement to extremist (neo-Nazi) activities (Article 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) were handed down in Novgorod, Samara, Ulyanovsk and Chelyabinsk. In total, at least 31 convictions for racist propaganda have been handed down since the beginning of the year, which has already exceeded the annual figure for 2007 (27 convictions). At least 5 more sentences were passed under Art. 280 (calls for extremist activity). A total of 48 people were convicted in these trials.

In September, in Nizhny Novgorod, a sentence, rare for Russian judicial practice, was handed down for cemetery vandalism motivated by ethnic hatred, and in passing the sentence, the court was guided precisely by the selectivity of the object of the crime (the vandal chose Jewish graves).

During September 2008, the Federal List of Extremist Materials was replenished with 11 items, which included 266 items as of September 22. It is alarming that the last items on the list do not indicate the court decision that resulted in the listing of the material.

In September, a court decision was made to recognize as extremist the regional movement "Toward the Power of God", which operated on the territory of Akhtubinsk (Astrakhan Region).