2007

In the period of January 1 to September 30, 2007, in Russia, there were no less than 230 racially motivated attacks affecting a total of 409 people, including 46 fatalities. Last year in the same period, there were 180 attacks with 401 victims, 41 of them dying as a result.

September 24-25, 2007 the SOVA Center participated in OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw. On September 25, Alexander Verkhovsky made an intervention at the working session "Combating intolerance and discrimination and promoting mutual respect and understanding - implementation of commitments;. Verkhovsky pointed out that governments are responsible for the tacit permission of racism and discrimination.

In June, 2007, at a U.N. Human Rights Council meeting, the Representative of the Russian Federation to the U.N. Office at Geneva subjected to severe criticism the report and recommendations of Mr. Doudou Diène, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The report was published in June, 2007, and was based on the materials gathered during Mr. Diène's visit to Russia.

Since the Rapporteur's conclusions were to a great extent based on the information provided by NGOs, several NGO representatives considered it necessary to come up with an open letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. A similar open letter was sent also to the Rapporteur

In the period of January 1 - July 31, 2007, in Russia, at least 310 people became victims of racist and neo-nazi crimes, 37 of them died. Last year in the same period there were 252 victims, 21 of them dead. So the number of victims has increased by 22% and the crimes have become more violent.

On July 23, 2007, in Angarsk (Irkutsk region) 5 young men attacked 3 eco-camp participants on their way from the manifestation organized in memory of Ilya Borodaenko who died in the result of a neo-nazi attack on July 21.

In the early morning of July 21, 2007, neo-nazi skinheads launched an attack on an anti-nuclear protest camp in Angarsk, Siberia. 21-year-old Ilya Borodaenko, an antifascist from Nachodka, suffered a head fracture during the attack and later died in hospital from injuries.

On July 17, 2007, the SOVA Center finally found out the precise information about the criminal charges initiated against the organization in response to the complaint of Andrey Savelyev.

On 5 July, 2007, Andrey Savelyev, an MP, for :Rodina; and notorious for his ultra right-wing ideas, announced that the Prosecutor's Office, acting on a complaint from him, initiated a prosecution against the SOVA Center on 15 June 2007.

On July 3, 2007, Maxim Martsinkevich (alias Tesak, which means "hatchet"), the leader of a neo-nazi group Format18, was arrested in Moscow. In April 2007, Tesak was charged with hate propaganda (article 282, part 1) in connection with his intervention at the debate in a Moscow club on February 28, 2007. He may be sentenced up to 5 years of imprisonment.

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).