In August, 2009, according to our data, not less than 23 people, including 3 fatalities, became victims of racist and neo-Nazi violent attacks in 4 regions of Russia: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kirov and Ufa. In comparison, in August, 2008, 11 people were murdered and 28 more were injured as a result of such attacks.
The major part of the incidents took place on the day of VDV (Airborne Troops) celebration, which is traditionally marked by mass disorders and fights of drunk VDV veterans, including racially motivated incidents. On August, 2, 2009, there were reported not less than one murdered person and 6 injured ones, not taking into account mass disorders in Nizhniy Novgorod and Moscow region. The other attacks were perpetrated by neo-Nazi skinheads and representatives of other ultra-rightwing subcultures.
In all, from the beginning of the year, not less than 42 people were murdered and 216 more were injured in 33 regions of Russia as a result of neo-Nazi and racist violence. In 2008, in the same period of time, 85 people were murdered and 328 were injured.
In August, there were not less than 4 incidents of vandalism reported: in Vladivostok it was a Protestant church, in Moscow, Pskov and Penza regions there were attacks on Orthodox churches and cemeteries. In Vladivostok and in Moscow there were arson attacks.
In all, from the beginning of the year, there were not less than 60 incidents of racially and ideologically motivated vandalism, including 7 arson attacks. These includes 22 ideologically motivated acts (graffiti painted on the monuments of Great Patriotic War, neo-Nazi graffiti); 15 acts against Jewish objects; 11 acts against Orthodox Church objects; 5 acts against Muslim objects; 2 acts against Armenian objects; one act against each of Catholic, protestant and other religions' objects.
Informal ultra-rightwing groups as well as registered political organizations has raised propaganda activities due to the start of the election campaigns in several regions of Russia. In Moscow, the activity of the rightwing is more apparent: there is a number of prominent radical nationalists run for Moscow City Duma, and LDPR (Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) and :Sovetskaya Rossiya; newspaper associated with KPRF (Zyuganov's Communist Party of Russian Federation) has already came up with xenophobic publications. Besides, Alexander Barkashov, the leader of RNE (Russian National Unity), has announced his wish to run for the office of the mayor of one of the Moscow region towns. In Vladivistok, despite the fact that Alexei Komarov, the leader of the Union of Slavs of the Far East, is currently on trial, his organization is going to participate in the municipal election and has started a sticker campaign.
In August, the Federal List of Extremist Materials was enlarged on August 3, 5, 13 and 14 by paragraphs 404-414. The last paragraph caused a scandal, because it presents a very poorly composed list of materials which are not possible to identify, including a certain :flag with a cross;. The flag is not described in detail, which leads to the fact that now in Russia all the flags with all kinds of crosses are prohibited (including flags of a number of states, the Red Cross flag, etc.) We would like to underline, that we consider demagogic the words of the officials who said that such interpretation of this ban is not correct. On the contrary, all the precedents of prosecution of people and organizations for distribution of extremist materials are based on the literal interpretation of the List, even when the materials are not possible to identify.
In all, by the end of August, 2009, the List contains 414 positions (part of the positions contains several materials). Court decisions on 5 of the materials were already set aside, 13 materials were added to the List twice, and one material - for three times.
In August, there were not less than 4 guilty verdicts against 14 people (including 4 people who were released from penalty) for violent hate crimes in Voronezh, Volgograd, Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg. In all, from the beginning of the year, there were 30 guilty verdicts against 84 people (including 25 people who by different reasons were not doomed to imprisonment).
In August, there were 3 guilty verdicts against 3 people for hate propaganda in Arkhangelsk and Vladimir regions and in Krasnodar region. All the convicts were sentenced to compulsory labor. In all, in 2009, there were 25 guilty verdicts for xenophobic propaganda (article 282 of the Criminal Code) against 35 people (including 18 of them who were sentenced to suspended sentences).
The most high profile event in the field of excessive and unfounded sanctions against extremism was the arrest in Ufa (Tatarstan) of 5 people accused of xenophobic propaganda on one of the oppositional websites :Ufa Gubernskaya;. Some of them are known academic scientists. They were detained for several days, and then 4 of them were released, but were sentenced to home arrest.
