On December 4, 2006, vandals destroyed several Armenian graves at the cemetery of the village of Inozemtsevo (Zheleznovodsk, Stavropol Territory). "Unknown intruders desecrated eight graves with burials of persons of Armenian nationality. Monuments were broken on the graves, tombstones were desecrated ," the city administration said. The police department of the city reported that the issue of initiating a criminal case is being decided on this fact. The amount of damage is calculated.

December 3, 2006 at about 15.00 in Moscow, near the Avtozavodskaya metro station, at a group of activists of the Vanguard of the Red Youth (AKM) and the Left Front, who were heading to the building of the city committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to hold a meeting, shouting "Death to the red scum! " Sieg heil!" attacked by a group of 20-25 young people. The attackers were holding empty bottles and rebar, as well as lit fireworks.

On December 4, at the cemetery of the village of Inozemtsevo (Zheleznovodsk, Stavropol Territory), vandals destroyed several Armenian graves. "Unknown intruders defiled eight graves with burials of Armenians. Monuments were broken on the graves, tombstones were desecrated," the told a RIA Novosti city administration correspondent. The issue of initiating a criminal case is being resolved.

November 9-10, 2006, an ODIHR working meeting on hate crime data gathering took place in Vienna. On a preceding NGO conference Alexander Verhovsky, the director of the SOVA Center, moderated one of the sections. Stephania Koulaeva, the director of the St. Petersburg "Memorial", was also representing Russian NGOs at the conference. The meeting elaborated general recommendations (which included SOVA Center recommendations ). Today ODIHR distributed the final version of the document ( PDF file ).

On November 28 - December 1, the Pyatigorsk city court continued hearings on the case of Imam Anton Stepanenko. We publish the Ark Project report on the court hearings: "Anton (in Islam - Abdallah) Stepanenko, Russian, born in 1980, a native of Khabarovsk, converted to Islam in 1997 and since 2004 has been the imam of a mosque in the city of Pyatigorsk. Stepanenko systematically called on his parishioners refrain from extremist views and held anti-terrorist public events.

A long-standing conflict around Basic Orthodox Culture (BOC) courses in secondary schools is a focal issue in relationships between the Russian Orthodox Church and the government. Over the two recent years, this issue has come all the way from multi-party, confused and confusing debates to a more straightforward collision between the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, on the one hand, and the top clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church, on the other.

On December 4, 2006, the district court of the Ordzhonikidzevsky district of Ufa (Bashkiria) passed a verdict on a group of skinheads who had beaten up foreign students from Vietnam and Angola. The leader and ideologist of the group, 24-year-old Andrey Ugryumov, and three of his 18-year-old "comrades-in-arms" Edik Khairullin, Albert Fayrushin, Alexander Kiryanov were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment from 1.5 to 3 years with a suspended sentence.

Edited by A. Verkhovsky This report continues a series of SOVA Center's seasonal analytical reviews started in the autumn of 2004. As before, all materials used for this report are published on SOVA Center's website at http://sova-center.ru . Please, note that we choose not to focus here on the activity of radical Islamic groups (in the North Caucasus and in other Russian regions) and on criminal prosecution of Islamic radicals.

On December 2, 2006, people of non-Slavic appearance were beaten up in the village of Pshekhskaya, Belorechensky District, Krasnodar Territory. At about 7:30 am, five cars drove up to the store, located at the corner of Shirokaya and Vokzalnaya streets, and about 10-15 young people got out of them. The attackers entered the store and demanded to all those present: "Russians, vacate the store, and non-Russians stay!" After that, they beat the inhabitants of st.

On December 4, 2006, the South-Western Transport Prosecutor's Office of the Moscow Region charged the third participant in the attack on a citizen of Kyrgyzstan in an electric train near Moscow. Recall that earlier charges were brought against two more arrested in this case.