2007

On February 17, 2007, in Orenburg (Southern Urals), a group of youngsters attacked, in broad daylight, a 21-year-old Uzbekistan citizen who had legally worked as a shoemaker. He was hospitalized with multiple stab wounds and died a few days later, on March 2. On March 3, four teenagers were arrested and charged in connection with the attack.

A newly formed State "Party for a Just Russia" (or "A Just Russia") with Sergey Mironov, the Russian Senate Chairman as a leader, seems to achieve it's originality through becoming a party with a slight smell of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Perhaps, this will serve as a difference between "A Just Russia" and the "United Russia" for many of the voters.

In February, 2007 we registered 29 attacks with at least 44 victims, 7 of them dead. It's not much more, than in January, but this figure will certainly be higher, because often the attacks are registered much later than they were committed.

On February, 28, 2007 Moscow nazis interrupted political debate in "Bilingua" club. During the discussion about 15 nazis from National Socialist Society and a movement called Format 18 started to shout "Sieg Heil" and to give nazi salutes. Maxim Martsinkevich (alias Tesak, which means "hatchet"), one of their leaders, demanded the floor and finally was given it to yell nazi and anti-liberal slogans.

A Syktyvkar (Komi Republic) newspaper Zyryanskaja zhizn has attracted attention of Rosohrankultura, a Ministry of Culture and Mass media department, which controls the legislation observance. It's regional department has brought an action against the newspaper for a publication which, in it's opinion, incites ethnic and religious enmity and calls to violence.
But in this case is the newspaper would be punished just for quoting local Ombudsman.

On February 8 and 9, 2007 there were three nazi attacks committed in Russia: one in Nizhny Novgorod and two in Moscow. Presumably, this series of attacks was committed in commemoration of Pawel Ryazanzev, a rightwing radical activist, who was killed in Moscow 40 days before.

In January, 2007 at least 39 people, 7 of them dead, became victims of hate crimes in Russia. Moscow remained the center of racist and neo-nazi violence: all of the murders and 11 more attacks were committed there. The attack on a 20-year old antifascist Ivan Jelin on January 14, 2007, in St. Petersburg, became the high profile case of the month.

On January 30, 2007, Russian Supreme Court sustained a verdict to a group of people accused of a murder with a bias motive. The Supreme Court partly changed the verdict, softening three of the six convicts' sentences. The charges which include hate crimes committed with a bias motive were not changed.

We publish a decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) pronounced on December 7, 2006, on the application by Igor Artyomov, the leader of "Russian All-Nation Union".
Igor Artyomov applied to ECHR on May 13, 2005, after all the degrees of jurisdiction in Russian Federation had refused to register his movement as a political party. The dismissals were based on the word "Russian" in the name of the party. It contradicts the Political Parties Act prohibiting the establishment of political parties based on professional, racial, ethnic or religious affiliations.