June

In June, 2007, Human Rights First, one of the leading human rights advocacy organizations, released a new report 2007 Hate Crime Survey. It is a review of the rising tide of hate crimes covering the region from the far east of the Russian Federation and the Central Asian states across Europe to North America: the 56 participating states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

On June 19, 2007, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, several verdicts were announced in criminal cases against rightwing extremists. In St. Petersburg the jury found a group of young men guilty in the murder of Roland Epassak, a citizen of Congo, who was stabbed to death in September, 2005. In Moscow, three skinheads, affiliated with the neo-nazi Slavic Union, were convicted of premeditated act of hooliganism, infliction of light bodily harm and assault. On the same day the Supreme Court of Russia upheld the conviction of rightwing activists Mikhail Klevachov and Vladimir Vlasov in the case of the Grozny-Moscow train detonation of June 12, 2005.

Valentina Uzunova, an ethnologist and expert on extremism and racist incitement in Russia, was attacked and beaten by an unknown person in St. Petersburg on June 19, 2007. 59-year-old Uzunova was hospitalized with a concussion.

On June 20, 2007, in Moscow, the SOVA Center presented a new report, Sowing On The Meadow Of Russian Nationalism. The report describes radical nationalism and resistance against it in the spring of 2007. The report will be available in English in a few weeks.

In June, 2007, Human Rights Watch and the European Region of the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA- Europe) released their report "We Have the Upper Hand". Freedom of assembly in Russia and the human rights of lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender people. PDF version of the report is available here.