News Releases

Dear colleagues , as an experiment, we start translating our monthly summary into German language. Today we publish the summary for January, 2009. In future, we plan to create a German page on our website.

Im Januar 2009 wurden nicht weniger als 39 rassistische Übergriffe verübt, infolge derer 14 Menschen starben. (Im Januar 2008 gab es nicht weniger als 59 Angriffe auf Menschen, wobei 15 Personen starben.)

In January 2009, not less than 39 people, including 14 fatalities, became victims of racist and neo-nazi violence (in January 2008, there were not less than 59 victims, including 15 fatalities).

On January 28, 2009, some of Mass Media reported that Raimkul Attakurov, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Kyrgyzstan to Russia, had twice hold a meeting with Dmitry Dyomushkin, the leader of :Slavic Union; (SS) national-socialist organization. According to the interview with Attakurov at a Kyrgyz newspaper :Delo Nomer; (http://delo.ktnet.kg/2009/03/07.shtml), the ambassador had meetings with one of the neo-nazi leaders in connection to the multiple racist assaults on Kyrgyzstan nationals in Russia. We publish a common statement of "Memorial" and "SOVA" Center concerning this case.

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;.