Translated material
Summary on Racism
Moscow remains the leader in xenophobic crime
Moscow continues to hold the lead in the number of crimes motivated by xenophobia, racism and radical nationalism. This conclusion follows from the monthly report of the SOVA information and analytical center, dedicated to the problems of xenophobia, published at the end of last week. “In September, racist and neo-Nazi-motivated violence killed one person and injured at least 14 others. The incident, which resulted in one death and seven injuries, was recorded in the capital,” Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the SOVA center, told reporters. According to him, in September there were clashes on ethnic grounds in Rostov-on-Don (five people were injured) and Yakutia (two injured).In total, since the beginning of the year, racist attacks have been recorded in 39 Russian regions, the report of the SOVA center notes. Turning to the summary of the past months, human rights activists again note the “leading positions” of Moscow and the Moscow region in the number of violent crimes motivated by xenophobia: 11 dead and 94 injured. In second place are St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region - one dead and 35 injured; in third - Nizhny Novgorod, where two people were killed and 14 were injured at the hands of extremists. The authors of the report remind that these sad statistics do not include victims of mass fights and incidents that occurred in the regions of the North Caucasus. The main targets of xenophobic attacks remain, as a rule, natives of Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Human rights activists from the SOVA center note that in September, compared to August, the number of court sentences for “hate crimes” has noticeably decreased. While the last month of summer saw a surge in judicial activity in the prosecution of racist violence (13 verdicts were handed down), in September only one trial ended with a guilty verdict. We are talking about the case of two Kaluga police officers who beat up natives of Central Asia. “Another trial - about the beating of an Indian citizen in Arkhangelsk - ended in the reconciliation of the parties,” the report notes. In addition, in mid-September in St. Petersburg, the investigation into the case of the Nazi skinhead group “Lincoln 88” was completed, and the case was sent to court. 25 members of this group are suspected of committing 12 racist attacks.
The beginning of October was marked by the completion of a high-profile trial in Tyumen. On Friday, the Tyumen Regional Court handed down a verdict in the case of a group of neo-Nazis led by 23-year-old Alexander Khodyrev. As human rights activists from the SOVA center note, 9 of Khodyrev’s 14 accomplices were minors. The court found the defendants guilty of attacks that injured 14 people (six of the victims were seriously injured and two were killed). It is noted that the investigation was able to prove only 15 crimes incriminated against the group. As a result, Khodyrev himself was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and his accomplices received from five years in a correctional colony to 12 years in an “adult” maximum security colony.