2008

In December 2008, in Russia, not less than 8 people (including 2 fatalities) became victims of racist and xenophobic violence. As before, we believe this considerable decrease of the number of victims to be due to underreporting (in the same period of time, in 2007, 11 people were murdered and 39 were injured). In December, attacks were reported in Moscow, Novosibirsk, Volgograd and Belgorod.

On August 26, 2008, the Pervomaiskii District Court, in Krasnodar, declared materials related to the Chinese spiritual discipline Falun Gong to be "extremist.'

On December 15, 2008, Moscow city court convicted a group of neo-Nazis (so called :Ryno gang;) of a series of attacks on representatives of ethnic minorities. In all, they were charged for 20 murders and 12 attempted murders.

On December 5, 2008 in the village Zhabkino (Moscow region), two neo-Nazis attacked two migrant workers from Tadjikistan. One of them, 20 year-old Azizov, was murdered and beheaded.

In November 2008, not less than 18 people, including 3 fatalities, became victims of racist and neo-nazi violence in Russia. Beside Moscow, the crimes were reported in St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Penza and Kaliningrad. For comparison, in November 2007, we recorded 70 victims, including 4 fatalities.

On November 27, 2008, one of the Irkutsk news-papers published the results of an investigation which showed that the high profile murder of 16 year-old Olga Rukosyla didn't take place. Moreover, there was no such a girl with such a name.

In October, 2008, Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights published the second annual report :Hate crimes in the OSCE region - incidents and responses;.

In October, 2008, not less than 19 people, 4 of them dead, became victims or racially motivated attacks. Formally, it is much less than in the same period in 2007 when we registered 103 victims, including 6 fatalities. But firstly, on October 20, 2007, a neo-nazi raid took place in Moscow, resulting in not less than 30 victims, and secondly, it is absolutely obvious that we don't get reports about the crimes. Thus, after St. Petersburg Governor Matvienko said on August 19, 2008, that there were no hate crimes in the city, not a single crime of the sort has been reported there.

On October 20, 2008, a conference :Europe-Russia-Georgia: Peacekeeping; took place in Vienna, Austria. The SOVA Center doesn't monitor events in South Ossetia, but this conference falls into our field of interests, because it was organized by Russian Public Chamber and Free Academy of the Austrian Freedom Party. The Public Chamber of Russian Federation is a formally nongovernmental organization which is to represent civil society to the President of Russia. Its functions and status are not determined. One third of the Chamber members are appointed by the President.

Last week was marked by a new wave of neo-Nazi violence against young antifascists, with one murder in Irkutsk and one in Moscow. On November 27, 2008, one of the Irkutsk news-papers published the results of an investigation which showed that the high profile murder of 16 year-old Olga Rukosyla didn't take place. Moreover, there was no such a girl with such a name.