By Vestnik Kavkaza
25 people died and no less than 180 people were hurt in nationalist motivated attacks in Russia last year. Such information is presented in a report by Moscow Bureau for Human Rights devoted to xenophobia problems. The head of the bureau, Alexander Brod, states that “such incidents took place in 27 regions of the country; the first place is taken by Moscow, it is followed by the Moscow Region, St. Petersburg, the Krasnodar region, the Voronezh region, the Kaluga region, the Ryazan region, and the Republic of Komi.”
As for law-enforcement practice, it grew in comparison with 2012. About 30 guilty verdicts were delivered, 54 people were sentenced in 32 regions.
At the same time, the federal list of extremist organizations became longer. Russian Marches are still active. They covered 49 constituents of the Russian Federation and united either radicals or citizens who have protest views. The marches still provide radical nationalist rhetoric, including nationalistically motivated traditional criticism of the federal and regional authorities.
“In our report we note that the strategy of the ethnic policy still has a declarative character and it is not implemented appropriately in regional programs. Almost nothing is done for education, cultivation of an inter-ethnic dialogue, social advertising, special shows on TV. At the moment the necessary measures are declarative,” Brod stated.
According to a political scientist Maya Astavatsaturova, “the report which was prepared by Moscow Bureau for Human Rights contains serious factual monitoring information. Despite numerous experts, we not always monitor changes in the situation. And the situation in ethnic relations and inter-religious relations is very emotional, very flexible, and it changes all the time. So, it is necessary to monitor the situation all the time. We are speaking about new nationalism – xenophobia expressed by young people and involvement of ethnic and religious factors into political relations. And it can be seen in the North Caucasus, for example. Unfortunately, there are facts of xenophobia in the North Caucasus itself.”
Astavatsaturova says that “ethnic-cultural organizations, ethnic-cultural autonomies should have wider and long-term political goals. The goals are improvement of our united civil platform, our civil unity. That’s how we can preserve the multinational variety of our country.”
