Report on xenophobia and criminalization in Russia
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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 22:53:58 +0300 (EET DST)
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Subject: Report on xenophobia and criminalization in Russia
From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Original sender: Alexander Ossipov <[email protected]>
Report on xenophobia and criminalization in Russia
Dear Boris,
I am passing to you the paper presented by Svetlana Gannushkina, a
member of the Council of 'Memorial' Human Rights Centre and Co-chair
of the 'Civic Assistance' Committee, at the Consultative Meeting of
NGOs in Geneva, supported by UNHCR within the framework of follow-up
activities of the 1996 Conference on CIS. This paper was kindly
translated into English by Michael Lashkevich, The 'Memorial' Human
Rights Centre. Since the participants' presentations were not included
into the proceedings of the Consultative Meeting, Svetlana Gannushkina
expressed her desire to distribute her paper freely and as widely as
possible.
Best wishes,
Sasha Ossipov
---------
Alexander Ossipov
The Memorial Human Rights Centre,
programme officer
Maly Karetny per. 12, Moscow, 103051, Russia
tel 7 095 282 08 16
fax 7 095 209 57 79
e-mail: <[email protected]>
---------
Original sender: Michael Lashkevich <[email protected]>
Svetlana GANNUSHKINA
The "Memorial" Human Rights Centre
"Civic Assistance" Committee
XENOPHOBIA AS A MECHANISM OF THE SOCIETY'S CRIMINALIZATION
Paper presented at the Consultative Meeting of the Non-Governmental
Organizations in the Framework of the Activity for Realizing
Subsequent Measures of the Conference on the CIS
Geneva, June 16, 1998
Dear Chairman, dear ladies and gentlemen!
Thank you for the possibility of making this presentation. I ask you
to consider my talk as a warning, not only on behalf of the two NGOs,
that I am representing, but on behalf of a number of human rights
organizations, that came out with the joint declaration "On the
Reality of the Fascist Danger in Russia".
Recently, increase of xenophobia, racial and ethnic hatred has been
observed in Russia. There are a lot of neo-fascist organizations which
act vigorously in Russia with the connivance of the authorities.
The events of this year confirm that this is not a fruit of a diseased
imagination:
* pogroms of the Caucasians in Udomlya (a town near the Kalinin
Nuclear Station), assault and battery of Azerbaijanians by an OMON
police unit in Tomsk; the Cossacks' terror in the Krasnodar Territory
against Meskhetian Turks; a pogrom of the Azerbaijanians and killing
one of them at the Luzhniki Fair in Moscow; physical abuse of an
Afro-American USA citizen in Moscow;
* an explosion of the synagogue in Maryina Roscha (Moscow); an attempt
to set fire to the synagogue in Otradnoe (Moscow); physical abuse of a
rabbi in Moscow; defilement of a Jewish cemetery in Irkutsk;
* mass display of the everyday and social nationalism and xenophobia
in most of Russian regions which is often encouraged by the local
authorities (in Krasnodar the politics of encouragement of xenophobia
is made by the governor Kondratenko an official one).
All these facts does not receive the corresponding appraisal by the
authorities. Moreover, there are evidences of collaboration between
the neo-fascists and the internal affairs bodies under pretence of
prevention of crime. In some regions this role is openly played by the
Cossacks.
Proceedings on the crimes committed on the basis of racial and
national hatred are either not instituted or groundless ceased. The
officials and the employees of the internal affairs bodies that
realize the politics of nationalism and xenophobia are not made
answerable despite of the appeals of public organizations and
resolutions of the Public Chamber on Human Rights attached to the
President of the Russian Federation.
Moscow authorities and the highest officials of the city internal
affairs bodies give by the mass media the distorted statistical data
on the crimes committed by the visitors. They affirm that the citizens
of CIS commit from 40 to 70% crimes (depending on the imagination of
the speaker). According to the official statistics of the Moscow City
Department of Internal Affairs and the Public Prosecutor's Office of
the City of Moscow the visitors commit less then 11% crimes. 77% of
the crimes in Moscow are committed by the inhabitants of the Moscow
region themselves. The officials suggest the idea that a visitor and a
criminal is the same.
The state of forced migrants in Russia becomes especially difficult on
this background. As before, it is characterized by a difficult
procedure of receiving the refugee status and frequent groundless
refusals in granting this status. The persons that came from outside
of the former USSR suffer most of all. The fortune of former Afghan
citizens which count about 150 000 people causes the strongest alarm.
The practice of extraditions to the CIS countries of the persons that
seek for political refuge goes on. The legal regulations on the
temporary refuge do not work.
The limitations of the RF Government Resolution #510 deprive most of
the victims of the military actions in the Chechen Republic of the
hope for receiving compensations for the lost dwelling and property.
Attempts to settle down in other regions of Russia without assistance
encounter repressive rules of the registration, invented by local
administrations after Moscow. The right to move freely is broken by
the authorities even with respect to recognized refugees.
The registration rules serve spreading xenophobia and turn into
mechanisms of criminalization of the society.
The persons without registration are subject to fines at best, but
often to fleecing or even physical abuse. According to our information
it has become a usual practice to detain for an indefinite period the
persons that carry no money with them; the cases of withdrawal and
annihilation of documents and of imprisoning for 30 days to the
special prison for beggars of the Moscow City Department of Internal
Affairs have become more frequent. It seems that many of the
policemen believe such actions to be lawful, and they accompany them
with nationalistic abuse, threats and accusations.
Some Moscow police officers confirm that there is a definite amount of
persons without registration to be detained and delivered to the
police offices. An official penalty is inflicted on the policemen if
this amount is not supplied.
The persons to be detained are chosen according to their ethnic types.
A glaring example of the mode of action of the police during passport
checks was the detainment of a well known Russian public figure Mr.
Sergei Grigoryants on May 10 not far from his place. The policemen
rejected the offer to come at once to Mr. Grigoryants' place to look
in the documents and make sure of presence of Moscow registration, but
rudely pushed him into a car and brought to a sobering-up station. A
nurse of the station, to her credit, rejected to certify the
intoxication state. Mr. Grigoryants was delivered to a police office
and held there all night long. Only in the morning he was delivered
home, accompanied by a policeman with a machine-gun. He showed his
passport and called up to his friends there. Having been conceived
that the "person of Caucasian nationality" possess registration, the
police did not release him, but brought him back to the police office
to accuse Mr. Grigoryants of breach of the peace. Personal
interference of the Interior Minister was the only thing to put an end
to this absurd accident. It is not difficult to imagine, what happens
with them, who has neither registration nor common acquaintances with
the Interior Minister.
Campaign of round-ups and repressions is continuing and intensifying.
Whereas in 1997 it victimized mostly the Georgians from Abkhazia, in
1998 its main victims have been victims of the Tajikistan conflict.
>From the early morning Tajiks gather near the reception of the "Civic
Assistance" Committee to receive a document which is nothing but an
appeal to police not to put obstacles to them in their sojourn in
Moscow. This appeal possess no validity, although it is printed on the
form with the Committee's seal. It gives no rights but certifies that
the person is known to employees of a public organization, so it
protects a little from the tyranny of arms of the law.
Refugees from Georgia, Chechnia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, the third
world have nowhere to escape further. This state of a part of
inhabitants of Moscow and of other Russian regions creates intolerable
climate in the society. The force that has no basis in the law
inevitably turns into a criminal force, and xenophobia serves to
progress of this process.
The achievements in the field of the law (the decisions of the
Constitutional Court, that demand to bring some documents concerning
the registration rules into accord with the Constitution and the
legislation of the RF; objections of the General Public Prosecutor's
Office made on the basis of our NGOs' appeals; abolition by courts of
local legal deeds) get broken by impunity of local administrations,
which openly ignore decisions of the legal bodies. The General Public
Prosecutor's Office brings in an objection against the Law #33 "On the
Terms of Sojourn in Moscow of the Citizens Entitled to the Entry to
Russia without a Visa" into the Moscow Duma, and the Smolensk Duma
pass a similar law next day. At the place of a cut head of a dragon
another one grows immediately.
Moscow and other large Russian cities has a large labor market, so the
flows of migrants make and will make their ways there. It is only
advantageous to criminal groups to use their slave labor and to turn
them into a source of profit of dishonorable policemen. It is to the
interest of all law-abiding citizens of Russia to recognize the
refugee status of everybody who has this right and to give a license
for a moderate price to every labor migrant. The way of xenophobia and
illegality is disastrous not only for forced migrants, but also for
the whole Russian society.
Thank you for your attention.
(Translated from Russian by Michael Lashkevich, The Memorial Human
Rights Centre)
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