An investigation against 20 criminal skinheads, which have been accused of killing 20 people and the attempt of murder in twelve cases has been accomplished, reported Vladimir Markin - representative of the investigation committee of the prosecution.

In June 2008 an investigation against a series of neo-Nazi attacks has been closed. 12 people have been caught – one already in March and two in April. The suspected confessed that they have killed 3 more people with knife after they have murdered the Yakut Sergey Nikolaev.

On May 16th 2008 in Rostov-na-Dony, in the district of Selmash a group of young people has attacked and beaten up a minor. The attack was accompanied by shoutings like "a churka!" And "hit the non-Russian”! The thorax of the teenager was injured. This incident only became publicly known because four of the attackers have been found.

On May 16th 2008 in Rostov-na-Dony, in the district of Selmash a group of young people has attacked and beaten up a minor. The attack was accompanied by shoutings like "a churka!" And "hit tSociologists mark an improvement of the interethnic relations in Russia, albeit, that the relation to mass immigration remains negative. This opinion poll has been conducted by the Russian Centre for the inquiry of the public opinion (WCIOM) between the 31st of May and the 1st of June in 46 regions of Russia.

In Karachaevo-Cherkessia, on the territory of the Special observatory of the Russian Academy of Science (RAS), on April 9-10th the Center for Interethnic Cooperation together with the Department of the Caucasus Institut of ethnology of the RAS and the Center of national cultures of Krasmodar carried out a seminar on the topic: «Northern Caucasus: problems of steady development in conditions of social change at the beginning of the century». Those taking part in the seminar, included scientists and experts from all the republics of Northern Caucasus and the regions of Krasnodarsk, Stavropol and Astrakhan.

Below you can find the program of the conference.

On April 7th, 2008 around 21.30 in Moscow not far from the metro station “Vykhino” a group of skinhead attacked 24 years old natives of Ingushetia, Boris Oziev and Nalgiev.

In connection with the increasing actions of vandalism on the cemiteries, acting as the chief of the General Management of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (GMMIA) of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea Nikolai Ilychev ordered to take under control all the Muslim cemiteries on the territory of Crimea. In quality of chief of the GMMIA, Nikolai Ilychev talked about this to the citizens of Crimea in a text which in possession of the Crimean news agency.

The Center for Interethnic Cooperation and the Department of the Caucasus Institut of Ethnology RAS (Russian Academy of Sciences) at the Special Observatory of the RAS (Arkhiz, Republic of Karachaevo-Chirkessya) carried out a three days interregional practical academic seminar on the topic “ Northern Caucasus: steady development in a climate of transformation at the beginning of the new century”.

The seminar took place on April 8-9th, 2008. Those taking part in the seminar included representatives of scientific instituts of the Republics of Northern Caucasus, of the regions of Rostovsk, Astrakhan, krasnodarsk and Stavropolsk, and members of the department of the Caucasus Institut of Ethnology and of the Center for Interethnic Cooperation.

Soon you will find on our website more information about this event.

Participants on April 10th in the round table “Youth against nationalism” within the framework of the political club “For a constructive co-operation” disucssed about the display of extremism in Russia.

The phenomenon of youth extremism is generated by illiteracy and lack of culture – to such conclusion came the representatives of different peoples (Russians, Coreans, Tatars, Cossacks, Ukrainians), of public organizations and of students.

Russian Muslims expressed their indignation at the decision of the Court in The Hague which has not found appeals to the hatred and violence in the movie Fitna by the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Vilders.

As the Vice-President of the Council of the Muftis of the Russian Federation Damir Gizatullin believes «this is related to nationalist circles.

In the Rzhev area of the Tver region, on April 6th, during a fight between natives of Armenia and local inhabitants, 20 people were wounded. The law enforcement bodies do not consider the conflict to be interethnic.

"The fight took place around 16.00 in the village of Muravevo. As a result of the skirmish, 20 people had been wounded, 10 of whom have been hospitalized. The condition of one of them is considered to be serious”, referred today the law enforcement authorities.

On April 7th, 2008 the railway court of Ryazan proclaimed the city public patriotic organization (RCPPO) “Russian national Unit” (RNU) an extremist one, and decided to liquidate it.

It is important to remember that the RNU of Ryazan was officially registered in April 2002. The heads of the RCPPO RNU Boris Parshin and Oleg Panfilov set about nationalist propagandistic literature in Ryazan and carried on assemlies in the centre of the city on the Square of Victory, during which they distributed those publications. Regardless of the warning issued to the organization by the Office of the Prosecutor in April 2006 on the inamissibility pf extremist activities, the distribution of xenophobic materials has not been stopped.

The main rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar and the chairman of the Muftis of Russia Ravil Gainutdin confirmed their intention to build up a constructive dialogue between the Jew and Muslim communities.

"I am sure that in the future our religions are going to live in peace, agreement, mutual comprehension and friendship and that there will not be any misunderstanding. This is our wish and our hope", - said Lazar to the journalist on Thursday, after the meeting with Gainutdin in the Public Chamber in Moscow.

On March 27th in St. Petersburg was reported about the murder of a citizen from Azerbaijan and of a citizen from Uzbekistan.

As our correspondent Tatyana Voltskaya stated, the body of the 33 years old citizen from Azerbaijan was found in a forest by the Piskarevsiy Prospekt. In the Vyborg area they found the body of the 20 years old citizen form Uzbekistan with multiple knife wounds. At the law enforcement bodies they believe that he might have been killed for national hatred reasons.

The world council of churches called its participants to start up a dialogue with Muslim Scientists with the purpose of maintaining peace. The WCC brings together more than 560 millions Christians from 349 churches all over the world, including the majority of orthodox churches, protestant organizations and a set of independent groups.

As Reuters reports, the Council, whose centre is located in Geneva, informed that it plans to create a permanent forum for questions about teology and ethics, where Christian leaders and those who signed the document “What is common between you and us”, edited by 138 islamic scientists and leaders last October, will enter.

The British Jew Community called the London Jews for active participation in the future elections for the city council. Otherwise low presence could provide support to the extreme right British Party (BNP).

The representative Council of the Jew Community of Britain launched a campaign under the motto “your voice or them”, whose purpose is to raise consciousness of potential voters on the importance of participation in the elections of the city council of London May, 1st this year. The purpose of this campaign is to remind the society of the threats that the BNP raises not only for Jews, but for all the inhabitants of Great Britain.

Attacks on natives from Caucasus and Central Asia are getting more and more violent in Russian cities. This has been observed by the participants in the Press-Conference “Xenophobic Moods amoung Russian Youth takes form of Epidemic” last Friday on the European Day for the Fight against Racism, at the Independent Press-Center of Moscow.

The following participants answered the journalists` questions: Levon Mykanyak, Association of Association of Armenian Youth of Russia; Ashot Ayrapetyan, Center for Interethnic Cooperation; Olga Abramenko, “Memorial” Anti-discrimination Center (St. Petersburg); Natalia Yudina, Information-Analysis Center SOVA and Elena Dudukina, Youth Human Rights Movement (Voronezh).

The Parliament of Kabardino-Balkaria on March, 20th in the plenary session addressed the deputies of the Moscow municipal duma with the request to develop measure against xenophobia in Moscow.

In their statement the deputies of the Parliament of Kabardino-Balkaria expressed their concern for the “more and more frequent cases in Moscow of attacks on citizens because of national or racial reasons”. Thus, as it is marked in the document, “similar attacks are often qulified as banal hooliganism”.

On Saturday, almost 1,000 people participated in the meeting in the very centre of Amsterdam, calling for religious and racial tolerance.

Protesters carried posters with inscriptions: “enough means enough” and “stop the witch-hunt against the Moslems”. The reaso for the meeting was the forthcoming exit of the film of the right wing parliamentarian Gert Uilders, openly criticing the Coran.

«We can not be silent anymore. In the Netherlands there is an atmosphere of hate and fear» -declared the representative of a Dutch anti-racism organization, who set up the meeting.

‘On March, 21st at the Independent Press Center took place a conference on the topic “Xenophobic moods among russian youth takes form of epidemic”. At the conference took part Ashot Ayrapetyan, Center for Interethnic Cooperation, Olga Abramenko, “Memorial” Anti-discrimination Center (St. Petersburg), Natalia Yudina, Information-Analysis Center SOVA, Elena Dudukina, Youth Human Rights Movement (Voronezh), Levon Mykanyak, Association of Association of Armenian Youth of Russia.

‘Patriots’ and ‘Volkshturm’ - two nationalist gangs liquidated by the authorities in the Sverdlovsk region. This was announced at a press-conference by the head of the Sverdlovsk region police force, Mikhail Nikitin.

The gangs were liquidated in the first two months of this year. The organisers of offences carried out by gang-members in the Sverdlovsk region have been arrested. The motivation behind the gangs’ actions was incitement to racial hatred. Gang members had Nazi memorabilia, handcuffs and weapons confiscated.

Polish anti-Semites have desecrated the tomb of the famous Hassidic Rabbi Elimelekh Weissblum. Police discovered that the tomb had been disfigured with Nazi swastikas and Anti-Semitic slogans.

Rabbi Weissblum was one of the most influential rabbis in the Hassidic movement in the 18th century.

The District court of Riga has sentenced a neo-Nazi, Andris Iordans, to a year and a half in prison. He was found guilty of incitement to racial hatred, according to RIA Novosti.

The starting point of the case against Iordans was his appearance at a political discussion on the history of Latvia. During the discussion, Iordans said that “Jews and gypsies are not people. They are like gangrene in society which needs to be cut out.”

On the 4th of March 2008 the prosecutor of the Central district of Voronezh confirmed that 3 citizens of the city have been charged in relation to an attack on an Iraqi national, Hadi Ali Hussein. The three have bee charged under Article 116 of the Russian Criminal Code, ‘bodily harm linked to hooligan intentions'.

A memorial to the suffering of Austrian Jews at the hands of the Nazis has been destroyed not long after its unveiling.

Last week, the artist Peter Wagner put up 70 wooden posts along a road in the town of Oberschutsen, near to a monument commemorating the Annexe of Austria by the Nazis on the 12th of March 1938. According the newspaper ‘Courier’ Wagner’s project was called ‘Zone 38 – 70 years after the Annexe’, and was dedicated to the memory of the Jews of Obervart district.

An overwhelming majority of Muslins in the world condemn the use of terror. These results were obtained through research by the Gallup. The global survey was carried out over six years on three continents and its results are based on interviews with more than 50 thousand respondents.

The League of Palestinian ‘Ulemas’ (Muslim scholars) have condemned a series of recent attacks on Christian’s property in Gaza and has called upon the Palestinian government to bring the guilty parties to justice.

The chairman of the League, Marvan Abu Ras and many Muslim theologians as well as a delegation of Christian priests, arrived together at the Palestinian Legislative Council. Also, the minister of Health, Basima Naima, came to discuss the attacks with them.

Moscow considers that the claim the Georgia is against Russia is uncalled for, and even will go to the European Court of Human Rights. The Russian Justice Department has given both their Georgian colleagues and Strasbourg a text of 235 pages in which they call all of the complaints ‘unacceptable’.

Moscow refuses to acknowledge that Russian authorities violated several articles of the European Convention on Human Rights by way of mass deportations of Georgian citizens at the end of 2006.

Despite the several protesters from the city, the city authorities again are trying to start construction in a place where back in 1941 over 26,000 people were killed and buried- most of them Jews.

On February 21st several Odessa residents blocked many streets in a sign of protest against the city authorities. Almost eight thousand people took part. Including activists from the movement “Memorial Town” who have been trying for five years to have a memorial erected on Tolbukhina Street in honor of victims of fascism.

This was the title of a round-table discussion organised by the Assembly of the Peoples of Russia together with the City of Moscow’s Committee on inter-regional relations and nationalities policy and the Nationalities Committee of the Russian Duma. It was held on the 5th of February 2008 in the Moscow Nationalities Hall.

According to the organisers, “Judging by the experience of Assembly of the Peoples of Russia, the City of Moscow Government and other governmental and non-governmental bodies involved in inter-ethnic interaction, it is very important, on the eve of the presidential election, to discuss a range of topical ethnic and nationality-related problems and ways of dealing with them. This is done with a view to presenting joint proposals to the President and the Russian Government”.

Colleagues of the Center for Interethnic Cooperation took part in the 6th Session of the Intergovernmental working group for the effective implementation of the Program of Action in Durban, dedicated to opposing racism and xenophobia.

Unfortunately, the Working Group spent a lot of time on approving the concluding text and practically did not discuss the current situation in different countries and continents at all.

Trips to the European Union should be available to the European Union for Russian citizens without a visa in the future, announced the president of the Russian Federation Valdimir Putin at a press conference in the Kremlin. According to him, Europe must exist without differentiation lines and “quasi-liberal walls”.

Problems and prospects for development of the Jewish community are to be discussed with Rabbis and laymen delegates from almost 180 cities all over the country and from abroad at a meeting in Moscow, reports RIA News press secretary of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russian Federation (FEOR).

The next meeting of the FEOR, which is to open on Monday morning in the Moscow Jewish Community Centre, will be in honor of the 10th anniversary of the federation.

"The main topics for discussion at the congress will be the outlook and basis for the means of development of the Jewish community within Russian Federation in the next decade,” said a representative of FEOR.

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has published a report on racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and intolerance in Andorra, Latvia, Holland and Ukraine. According to correspondents of the Regnum agency, the report notes that despite some positive developments in these four Council of Europe member countries, there remain problems which are a cause of concern in the Commission. More specifically, an amendment was recently added to the Latvian Employment Code, outlawing racial discrimination, and attempts were made to increase the number of people receiving citizenship. However, problems relating to the full integration of the Russian-speaking population remain. There was an increase in the number of racially-motivated attacks and there is still a problem with the use of racist rhetoric by some politicians and organs of the mass media.

Gordon Brown, the prime-minister of Great Britain, spoke in support of an initiative on the issue of a partial introduction of Sharia law in the court practice of the country. This initiative was put forth by Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury.

Why has such an initiative appeared in Great Britain and not Russia, where the native Muslim population is more than twenty million? We asked a number of experts to answer that question.

Ruslan Kurbanov, political analyst, journalist and specialist from RAND Corp (USA): “The British situation differs from the Russian one in that Britain is one of the world leaders in the sphere of developing and implementing new and brave political-legal mechanisms and social models of support for public stability.

The RIA ‘Novosti’ press-centre was the setting for the presentation of a new book entitled ‘The law and Cyberspace’, written by the lawyer and publicist Ilya Rassolov and published in association with the Moscow Bureau of Human Rights.

According to Mr. Rassolov, the Internet does not differ from the rest of the world when it comes to the power of the law, and that it is necessary to establish a form of subsequent, as oppose to preliminary, control. This would involve only shutting down sites which break the law and a ‘swift procedure’ to deal with those that do.

The Russian Federal Migration Service (FMS) intends to create a “black database” of migrants whose arrival on Russian territory is not preferred.

According to the director of the FMS, Konstantin Romodanovsky, an information system of migration records will be created which will track the arrival of foreign citizens. When required, it would immediately react at the appearance of any information related to persons found on the “black list”.

It became known yesterday that a Turkish citizen was killed last Sunday in Moscow, and a South Korean native was beaten and robbed. In the first case, the attackers stabbed the foreigner in the stair case of a residence. The second incident occurred directly on the street. In the town of Pushkin near St. Petersburg, three youth, suspected in the January 12th harsh attack on a gastarbeiter from Kyrgyzstan, were arrested. As of now, there are not yet statistics of attacks on foreigners for last year. According to facts from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, however, there were fifteen thousand such crimes in 2006. This is up 17% from 2005.

Grozny. The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Chechnya in collaboration with the television and radio broadcasting companies “Vainakh” and “Grozny” is carrying out the promoting and preparation of a wide viewing audience to the forthcoming International festival “Noyev Kovcheg”. In the framework of this work, films about the lives of people of different faiths will be shown on local TV channels. These films, created by directors representing different countries, include art films, cartoons, science, documentary and historical films.

As was earlier reported in the press, summer 2008 will be memorable, as it will be the first time in the history of cinema in the capital of the Republic of Chechnya, Grozny, that the festival “Noyev Kovcheg” will take place.

Dear Georgiy,

I was forced to write this letter by the latest murder committed in Moscow. This time (not the last?) the victim of nationalists was 20-year old Vladimir Karamjian. First of all, I want to express my sincere sympathies to the parents and relatives of Vladimir. I myself am the father of two children and I understand the entire depth of the tragedy.

I am not counting on the publication of this letter: it has no greater meaning, and I’m not attempting to speculate on this sorrow or darken Russian-Armenian relations.

I am worried by something else:

The public prosecutor’s office intends to draw extremists out of institutes of higher education. Surveying of students are being carried out with the use of a specific form. “Fontanka” happened to acquire this form, which students of A.I. Gertsev University were filling out.

“Our teacher gave us these questionnaires and added: ‘You understand what needs to be done here” one student told “Fontanka”.