Russian nationalists started founding fighting groups Today a report of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights is going to be published. This report states that national organizations in Russia have at their command about 15,000 adult fighters and up to 50,000 teenage skinheads �under arms�. This means that the Russian nationalists are no longer merely propagating their views, but they proceeded on to the founding of armed groups and the execution of war operations. In the opinion of human rights activists, there have already been some pogroms and terrorist attacks carried out by the fighting groups. Meanwhile, representatives of the authorities come to nothing more than platitudes on nationalism having no place in Russia, and the leaders of the law-enforcement organs blandly call the skinheads �street kids�. The founding of armed fighting groups in Russia started this winter and was connected with an attempt by nationalist organizations to �saddle� a mood of protest on the occasion of the monetization of social benefits. The report of the human rights activists, which is going to be published today and which �Novye Izvestiya� already has at its disposal, cites several concrete examples. In February, the �War Power Union� under the head of the retired general Leonid Ivashov and the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) announced the founding of a �people's militia�. In its decision on the subject the Central Council of the DPNI talked about the founding of a network of secret groups of five people which are composed �by the principle of tight territorial habitation and the availability of a car�. On the homepage of the organization advice on how to obtain a weapon and what books about the Partisan war to read showed up. At that time also the leader of the ultra-nationalist organization �Slavic Union�, Dmitriy Demushkin, summoned his followers to get a licensed weapon. The organization �The Brown Time�, which was founded in December 2004 and later renamed to �Union of Russian Nationalists � Revolutionary Movement of Russia�, also calls an armed rise its aim. �Give us a pretext, or we�ll find one ourselves�, the resolution of the constitutive congress of �The Brown Time� says. In June, in the Vladimir Region yet another nationalist grouping, the �Russian All-National Union�, carried out a �patriotic summer camp� where the participants were taught hand-to-hand combat, survival under extreme circumstances, God�s law, and the basics of �national self-actualization�. Also the infamous Russian National Unity (RNE), whose activists are suspected to be responsible for the recent blasting of a train from Grozny to Moscow, spreads leaflets with the call to obtain weapons. The expert of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Semen Chariy, affirms that on the federal level in Russia there are seven nationalist parties and movements. These are the RNE (which is split up in several branches), �The Brown Time�, the National Power Party of Russia (which has been deprived of its license), the DPNI, the National Public Party, the Freedom Party and the Russian All-National Union. In some regions also local nationalist movements are active, for example: Cossack groupings, �Vityaz�� (Astrakhan�), �City Without Drugs� (Ekaterinburg). According to the data of the human rights activists, the total number of the fighting part of those organizations amounts to 10,000 to 15,000 people. Their members have already taken part in pogroms against natives of the Caucasus and Gypsies. This Feburary, there was a pogrom against Gypsies in the settlement Iskitim in the Novosibirsk Region. About 40 houses were ransacked and burned. In March, nationalists burned Gypsy habitations in Cherepovtse. In April, the �Che Guevara Squad�, organized by the delegate of the Yaroslavl City Council Sergei Krivnyuk, smashed the cars of some Gypsies, supposedly drug dealers. At the same time, Cossacks in Novorossisk crashed some houses of local Armenians. A fist fight the day before, where the Cossack Ataman Vasilyi Petrusha was beaten up, served as a pretext. The publication of �black� lists with the names of liberal politicians, human rights activists and journalists has become another tradition of the nationalists. The National Power Party, the �Slavic Union� and the DPNI have such lists of people who are �no friends of the Russian people�. In the Komi Republic local nationalists have recently threatened some scientist and human rights activists with punishment, accusing them of espionage for the USA. In the newspaper �Russian front� not long ago there was a call to punish members of the law-enforcement organs who investigate cases regarding nationalists. In spring, nationalist hackers wrecked more than ten homepages of human rights organizations, put their symbols on these pages and threatened to �continue to shut down homepages that propagate tolerance, communism, Judaism and other perversions on sexual grounds�. According to the report, skinheads have become a mass phenomenon in Russia. The estimations of their number rank from 10,000 to 50,000 people. There is not one particular All-Russian skinhead organization, they are scattered in a large number of small gangs. The places with the largest amounts of skinheads in Russia are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don and some other big cities. In these cities practically every day there are attcks on people who do not look Slavic. According to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, in the first half of 2005 skinheads killed 10 people and beat up more than 200. For example, in Astrakhan� skinheads slaughtered a Dagestani family. As if by a miracle, a two-year-old child survived, being two days alone in the apartment with the bodies of his dead parents before someone took notice. In the city Verkhnaya Pyshma of the Sverdlovsk Region local skinheads killed three Armenians in the course of a �cleansing� of the city. Not only natives of the Caucasus become victims of skinheads. In Moscow, two Algerians, students of the Joint Staff Academy of the Russian Supreme Court, in Novosibirsk, a family of Yakut students, in Ekaterinburg, 15 participants of a public assembly from Marij-El Republic were beaten up. Unfortunately, sociologist research shows that the nationalist ideas get more widespread among the country�s population every year. According to data of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 43% of Russians think that in Russia Russians should have more rights than other people, 23% admit feeling ill will towards natives of the Caucasus, 3% said that they don�t like Chinese, 2% that they don�t like Jews. According to other surveys, more than 60% of Russians are in favor of a limitation of immigration to Russia because they fear that the migrants might take away their jobs or worsen the situation regarding crime in the country. The biggest concession these people are willing to make is to only allow Russians from the former Soviet republics to enter Russia. In the first half of 2005 in Russia there have been six trials, where 21 extremists were convicted of having committed severe crimes on the basis of nationalist hatred and sentenced to prison (from 4 to 19 years). However, the authors of the report confirm that the Russian authorities wage the battle against the extremists merely by condemning the criminals. According to the director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Aleksandr Brod, the extremist ideologists continue to duck out. �For example, the Timiryazev District Court in Moscow did not call the publisher of nationalist literature Viktor Korchagin to account, under the pretext of a lapse in the statute of limitations�, human rights activists told �Novye Izvestiya�. At the same time, no official strategy for the fight against nationalist ideology has been worked out, and the higher ranking personnel in charge limit themselves to declare that �for Russia any phenomenon of nationalism and xenophobia is ruinous because our country is a multi-ethnic state�. The leaders of law-enforcement organs take the same stand. For example, the head of the Moscow militia, Vladimir Pronin, has just recently stated that in Moscow there are no skinhead organizations, there are only �street kids from Moscow or the area surrounding Moscow who pick out colored people and try to give them short shrift�. [15.08.2005] Source: Novye Izvestiya
Russian nationalists started founding fighting groups
The founding of armed fighting groups in Russia started this winter and was connected with an attempt by nationalist organizations to �saddle� a mood of protest on the occasion of the monetization of social benefits. The report of the human rights activists, which is going to be published today and which �Novye Izvestiya� already has at its disposal, cites several concrete examples. In February, the �War Power Union� under the head of the retired general Leonid Ivashov and the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) announced the founding of a �people's militia�. In its decision on the subject the Central Council of the DPNI talked about the founding of a network of secret groups of five people which are composed �by the principle of tight territorial habitation and the availability of a car�. On the homepage of the organization advice on how to obtain a weapon and what books about the Partisan war to read showed up. At that time also the leader of the ultra-nationalist organization �Slavic Union�, Dmitriy Demushkin, summoned his followers to get a licensed weapon. The organization �The Brown Time�, which was founded in December 2004 and later renamed to �Union of Russian Nationalists � Revolutionary Movement of Russia�, also calls an armed rise its aim. �Give us a pretext, or we�ll find one ourselves�, the resolution of the constitutive congress of �The Brown Time� says.
In June, in the Vladimir Region yet another nationalist grouping, the �Russian All-National Union�, carried out a �patriotic summer camp� where the participants were taught hand-to-hand combat, survival under extreme circumstances, God�s law, and the basics of �national self-actualization�. Also the infamous Russian National Unity (RNE), whose activists are suspected to be responsible for the recent blasting of a train from Grozny to Moscow, spreads leaflets with the call to obtain weapons.
The expert of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Semen Chariy, affirms that on the federal level in Russia there are seven nationalist parties and movements. These are the RNE (which is split up in several branches), �The Brown Time�, the National Power Party of Russia (which has been deprived of its license), the DPNI, the National Public Party, the Freedom Party and the Russian All-National Union. In some regions also local nationalist movements are active, for example: Cossack groupings, �Vityaz�� (Astrakhan�), �City Without Drugs� (Ekaterinburg). According to the data of the human rights activists, the total number of the fighting part of those organizations amounts to 10,000 to 15,000 people. Their members have already taken part in pogroms against natives of the Caucasus and Gypsies. This Feburary, there was a pogrom against Gypsies in the settlement Iskitim in the Novosibirsk Region. About 40 houses were ransacked and burned. In March, nationalists burned Gypsy habitations in Cherepovtse. In April, the �Che Guevara Squad�, organized by the delegate of the Yaroslavl City Council Sergei Krivnyuk, smashed the cars of some Gypsies, supposedly drug dealers. At the same time, Cossacks in Novorossisk crashed some houses of local Armenians. A fist fight the day before, where the Cossack Ataman Vasilyi Petrusha was beaten up, served as a pretext.
The publication of �black� lists with the names of liberal politicians, human rights activists and journalists has become another tradition of the nationalists. The National Power Party, the �Slavic Union� and the DPNI have such lists of people who are �no friends of the Russian people�. In the Komi Republic local nationalists have recently threatened some scientist and human rights activists with punishment, accusing them of espionage for the USA. In the newspaper �Russian front� not long ago there was a call to punish members of the law-enforcement organs who investigate cases regarding nationalists. In spring, nationalist hackers wrecked more than ten homepages of human rights organizations, put their symbols on these pages and threatened to �continue to shut down homepages that propagate tolerance, communism, Judaism and other perversions on sexual grounds�.
According to the report, skinheads have become a mass phenomenon in Russia. The estimations of their number rank from 10,000 to 50,000 people. There is not one particular All-Russian skinhead organization, they are scattered in a large number of small gangs. The places with the largest amounts of skinheads in Russia are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don and some other big cities. In these cities practically every day there are attcks on people who do not look Slavic. According to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, in the first half of 2005 skinheads killed 10 people and beat up more than 200. For example, in Astrakhan� skinheads slaughtered a Dagestani family. As if by a miracle, a two-year-old child survived, being two days alone in the apartment with the bodies of his dead parents before someone took notice. In the city Verkhnaya Pyshma of the Sverdlovsk Region local skinheads killed three Armenians in the course of a �cleansing� of the city. Not only natives of the Caucasus become victims of skinheads. In Moscow, two Algerians, students of the Joint Staff Academy of the Russian Supreme Court, in Novosibirsk, a family of Yakut students, in Ekaterinburg, 15 participants of a public assembly from Marij-El Republic were beaten up.
Unfortunately, sociologist research shows that the nationalist ideas get more widespread among the country�s population every year. According to data of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 43% of Russians think that in Russia Russians should have more rights than other people, 23% admit feeling ill will towards natives of the Caucasus, 3% said that they don�t like Chinese, 2% that they don�t like Jews. According to other surveys, more than 60% of Russians are in favor of a limitation of immigration to Russia because they fear that the migrants might take away their jobs or worsen the situation regarding crime in the country. The biggest concession these people are willing to make is to only allow Russians from the former Soviet republics to enter Russia.
In the first half of 2005 in Russia there have been six trials, where 21 extremists were convicted of having committed severe crimes on the basis of nationalist hatred and sentenced to prison (from 4 to 19 years). However, the authors of the report confirm that the Russian authorities wage the battle against the extremists merely by condemning the criminals. According to the director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Aleksandr Brod, the extremist ideologists continue to duck out. �For example, the Timiryazev District Court in Moscow did not call the publisher of nationalist literature Viktor Korchagin to account, under the pretext of a lapse in the statute of limitations�, human rights activists told �Novye Izvestiya�. At the same time, no official strategy for the fight against nationalist ideology has been worked out, and the higher ranking personnel in charge limit themselves to declare that �for Russia any phenomenon of nationalism and xenophobia is ruinous because our country is a multi-ethnic state�. The leaders of law-enforcement organs take the same stand. For example, the head of the Moscow militia, Vladimir Pronin, has just recently stated that in Moscow there are no skinhead organizations, there are only �street kids from Moscow or the area surrounding Moscow who pick out colored people and try to give them short shrift�.
[15.08.2005]
Source: Novye Izvestiya
