"You will no longer be the silent majority"

The Committee "Civic Assistance" opened a special hotline for victims or witnesses of crimes motivated by hate committed in Moscow. What is the nature of these crimes? how do they affect society, and why is it so important to help their victims?

What does it look like

One of the worst urban nightmares: what to do if with you, for example, in a subway car, they beat an innocent person just because he is swarthy or with slanting eyes, and you even call Can't you police without attracting the attention of bandits? Or sit and watch or they will kill you too.

What can I say, if you have reason to fear that you yourself will be attacked in this way.

The life of a person belonging to the so-called "visible minorities”, is associated with a constant risk of being confronted with more or less aggressive manifestations of racism.

Much has been written about this; here, for example, are the results of 2014 from Sova; I will give just a few examples concerning Moscow.

• To my friend - a citizen of the Russian Federation with a residence permit in Chechnya and burning black hair - a nurse in the clinic almost tore the skin with a needle, taking blood from a vein. A friend politely asked to be more careful, to which I received an evil "I came in, the black man -made, and even more careful for them!"

• A family of semi-labor, semi-forced Uzbek migrants from the Kyrgyz city of Osh clashed with a more difficult situation. On a mother with a small, still nursing child attacked by a mob of racists. The woman managed to escape, but the child managed to throw acid in your eyes. The child was treated, but everything became more complicated: Russian border guards deported the mother, and the father stayed with the patient child in arms.

According to preliminary data from the SOVA center, in 2014 19 people died in Russia from neo-Nazi and racist violence people were injured - at least 103. Victims of the ultra-right more often In total, the natives of Central Asia became (10 dead, 17 injured) and Caucasus (3 and 13). The most dangerous for potential victims of xenophobic violence by the cities of the country in 2014 "Owl" calls Moscow (8 dead, 28 wounded) and St. Petersburg (2 and 29). Since the beginning of the year, courts in Russia handed down 19 convictions in cases of violence motivated by of hatred, 42 people were convicted of them, 5 of them - conditionally.

• Or this was the story: a musician, a native Muscovite, a typical a modern city dweller rode the subway at a late hour. He was severely beaten several teenagers, shouting anti-Semitic curse words.

• Most recently, in Sviblovo, they stabbed woman in Muslim clothes. When this happened, she was your entrance. Falling down, she began to call for help. Passed by at least three women. Without calling, she, bleeding, she crawled to her home to the fourth floor, where an ambulance was called for her.

• In April, in Moscow, the Nazis stabbed to death a Tajik Mahmadkarim Jalilov, when he went home with groceries in the evening. He left three children.

Why do we single out such crimes in a separate group?

The simplest and most incomplete answer is because they are already highlighted in separate group by our legislation. Motivated violence racial, national, religious and other hatred, for such articles like murder, bodily harm and so on, punished more severely than "ordinary" domestic violence.

A more meaningful answer to this question would take more than one article. If try to formulate it succinctly, then a victim of motivated violence hatred or prejudice always becomes a specific person, but the target of the aggressor is always a certain group to which this person carried the aggressor (they can also attack a Russian, mistaking him for a Jew or Caucasian). Such attacks are always a signal to the group, an attempt to intimidate, "put in place", terrorize. The state, highlighting these crimes in a special group, also gives a signal about their special public danger.

What awaits the victim of such a crime in the police, hospital and court?

Above I have given several examples of attacks. All of them are different consequences for victims of racism. Not only because the scratched hand can not be compared with beatings, and even more so with murder. significant difference is what status a person has in Russia. Availability or lack of citizenship, own housing, family, medical insurance, money is critical to the very possibility continue a normal life after being on you or someone from your loved ones were attacked.

I think everyone has a rough idea of ​​what it is be experienced by the victim of “ordinary”, domestic violence or his/her loved ones people. Often expensive treatment, rudeness on the part of workers medical institutions, police. Severe psychological consequences. Forced separation from work, often leading to loss of earnings, and sometimes housing.

Now let's imagine that you don't speak Russian well and it's hard for you to explain to the doctor or police officer what happened. And if you don't have documents are in order, registration is overdue, is that all? Sometimes not even having problems with legal status, people are afraid to go to the police, to demand prosecution and punishment of criminals. I must say no they are afraid in vain: there were cases when the victims themselves were accused of attacking the aggressors.

A characteristic feature of such violence, in contrast to violence domestic, consists in the fact that its victims are most often representatives of groups in relation to which society practices discrimination. Thus, the victim of an attack is very often subjected to double or even triple discrimination: by the police, doctors, passers-by.

Why would NGOs get involved in this?

All people have the right to life and to defend their interests, and the state is obliged to ensure these rights. But also completely it is obvious that the situation described requires special measures, special assistance victims, as it is even more difficult for them to secure these rights than those who do not belong to discriminated groups. As often happens An initiative of this kind comes, of course, not from the state, but from below.

A few years ago, there was almost no one in Moscow who would provide such assistance on a permanent basis.

The Civic Assistance Committee has always dealt primarily with issues related to assistance in obtaining legal status, social help. Center "SOVA" - collection of crime statistics on ground of hatred. At the Moscow Protestant Church (Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy), who spends a lot of effort to help the homeless and the poor, among of which there are many Africans, there is a special project to counteract racial violence, but, unfortunately, their resources are only enough to social assistance and information gathering. All three organizations from time to time time cooperated, joining forces on individual cases.

But for two years now there has been a special project to help victims of such violence. It is carried out on the basis of Civic Assistance in cooperation with SOVA.

What can NGOs do?

The purpose of this project is not only to help individual victims - legally, psychologically, sometimes financially - but also to include this topic in public agenda. Real and potential victims, others non-profit and charitable organizations, foundations, journalists, the general public - these are the groups to which this project is intended to convey information about the existence of a problem, about the need to solve it, about finally, that a partial solution to this problem exists and is being implemented on practice.

The city will become a little less hostile to potential victims of such attacks if they know that there are people ready to come on help.

Concerned witnesses, charitable organizations that do not have of their resources, for example, to provide a lawyer, will know where advise victims to contact.

It is clear that to help the person who was attacked in front of your eyes, a simple call to the hotline will not work. But having informed, even later some time, about what you saw, you will help collect statistics, necessary, for example, to map safe and disadvantaged areas (and there is such a plan). You can become a witness in court, if it ever comes to that. you will cease to be silent majority.

Unfortunately, Moscow is too big a city for a couple to small NGOs could completely solve this problem. Berlin, on whose experience largely relied on the developers and implementers of the Moscow initiatives are known to be divided into several highly independent districts. So, almost every one of them has a similar project, moreover, it often operates on municipal money, in cooperation with local police and social services. (At this point I want to howl a little to the moon, of course, what can we hide.) Different circumstances of our life say that in modern Moscow, not to mention the rest cities, such help services in every district are simply unimaginable. Tem nevertheless, we live here and now, and there is no need to wait for more favorable economic and political conditions to support the initiative, the need for which has matured already about the day before yesterday.

You can support the initiative both with money (although now, of course, it is a little naive to wait for this), or by disseminating information about the project's hotline: +7 (903) 577-55-87 .

Sources

• Rozalskaya M. "You will cease to be the silent majority" // Mediazone. 2015. January 9th.