April 2009. Monthly results

Between 1 and 25 April 2009, at least 15 people were injured in racist and neo-Nazi attacks, two of whom died. In total, since the beginning of 2009, at least 23 people have died from such attacks, at least 98 have received various injuries (during the period of January-April 2008, at least 273 people were injured, 66 of whom died).

In April, incidents were recorded in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Arkhangelsk and Yaroslavl. In total since the beginning of the year - in 16 regions of Russia: Moscow (with the region), St. Petersburg (with the region), Nizhny Novgorod, Ulyanovsk, Ryazan, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Kursk, Kaliningrad, Tambov, Kemerovo, Chelyabinsk, Kostroma, Orel, Arkhangelsk, Yaroslavl.

The publication on one of the neo-Nazi sites of a statement about readiness to hold May 5, 2009 a "day of wrath", which was then reported by the main Russian media, caused a great resonance. Neo-Nazis declared their readiness to carry out mass racist and political attacks in memory of the well-known neo-Nazi leader Maxim Bazylev, who committed suicide on March 25 after being arrested on charges of several murders.

On April 29, 2009, DPNI leader Alexander Belov (Potkin) resigned as head of the organization. The departure was motivated by the desire to protect the organization from the need to comply with the formalities provided for by anti-extremist legislation in the event that he was convicted under Art. 282.

Vandal activity, motivated by Nazi or xenophobic ideological attitudes, was low in April. We recorded only 3 acts of vandalism, in which we can speak with a high degree of confidence about the motive of hatred. These are the drawing of swastikas on a portrait of Lenin in Pyatigorsk, portraits of Hitler on city buildings in Volgograd and the desecration of an Orthodox church in the Kaluga region (the walls were painted with anti-Christian inscriptions).

In April, the Federal List of Extremist Materials was updated twice (April 1 and 6). It included paragraphs. 362-367. However, the inclusion in the list of 362-365 seems to us either illegal or dubious. Item 289 is not excluded from the list - the book by V. Istarkhov: Blow of the Russian Gods;, although the decision to recognize the book as extremist was canceled in January 2009, and in April, when the case was re-examined, the court refused to recognize the book as extremist.

In April, we are not aware of any conviction for racist violence that included a hate motive. Although several sentences were handed down in a number of cases in which he was either suspected, but was not proven, or was not taken into account in the legal qualification of the crime. The first case refers to a group of teenagers who killed a native of Kyrgyzstan in January 2008 and disguised the murder as ritual. The second refers to the sentence to a Nizhny Novgorod policeman who beat up a native of Azerbaijan for racist reasons (we note that racist insults were nevertheless recorded in the sentence). The motive of hatred was not taken into account in the April verdict against the man who planted a dummy bomb near the Omsk synagogue in November 2008. He was convicted under Art. 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (knowingly false report of a terrorist attack).

In total, at least 8 sentences against 24 people have been issued for violent crimes with a racist motive since the beginning of the year (4 were sentenced on probation without additional sanctions).

Two sentences were handed down in April for xenophobic (anti-Semitic) propaganda - in the Vologda Oblast and Samara. In total, since the beginning of the year, at least 11 sentences have been handed down for xenophobic propaganda under Art. 282 and 1 sentence under Art. 280 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. In total, 16 people have been convicted in these cases since the beginning of the year, including 6 suspended sentences without any additional sanctions.