http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/600/42/367961.htm
Russia for Racists
03 June 2008
By Suzanne SchollIn Russia, if you have dark hair and a slightly swarthy
complexion, you are likely to be in danger. Sadly, the country's leaders have
tolerated, if not encouraged, fear of foreigners and assaults on those whose
appearance differs from the average Russian.
In a residential area of Moscow, a group of adolescents, many with shaven
heads and wearing combat boots, marches and shouts Russian nationalist slogans.
When they come across three Azeri boys, they don't hesitate. Soon, one of the
boys - only 13 years old - lies severely injured; he will have to be
hospitalized. The other two are injured as well. The perpetrators are never
caught.
Bashir Osiyev, 24, an Ingush-born clerk in a Moscow bank, is assaulted by
a group of skinheads while walking home with a friend. The friend is badly
wounded but manages to escape. Osiyev dies after being stabbed in the back. Two
of the assailants are injured in the course of the fight and arrested after
seeking medical assistance at a hospital. The others are never caught.
Two men from the Caucasus are on their way to the metro and are attacked
by a group of adolescents with knives. Both are treated in the hospital, the
perpetrators escape unrecognized.
In a small town in central Russia, two Uzbeks are viciously beaten up by
a group of teenagers.
All of these incidents occurred within just one week. They are picked at
random from an endless series of similar assaults, many of which end fatally.
The authorities tend to play down these attacks as the acts of rowdies -
even when the perpetrators are caught and can be prosecuted. This is because
charging someone with racism and xenophobia is more complicated and the process
more drawn out than winning a conviction for simple thuggery.
Indeed, racists can be assured of considerable sympathy from the security
forces and the public. After all, these attacks generally don't occur in some
dark alleyway. In most instances, they take place in crowded markets, metro
stations, or simply in busy streets.-Pedestrians nearby look the other way,
even if the victims are women and children.
A Chechen friend of mine and her 14-year-old son were attacked on the
street by three drunken skinheads. The skinheads began to push them around and
harass them, as people on the street looked away and kept moving. My friend
managed to talk insistently to the three until eventually they left her and her
son alone, only to pounce on a married couple that happened to be passing by.
The man looked like he was Jewish, they insisted loudly, and started to push
him around. But he's Russian, his frightened wife insisted, whereupon the three
apologized and let him go.
Neither husband nor wife were alarmed that the three drunks were chasing
Caucasus natives and Jews but pressed charges because they, as Russian
citizens, had been harassed. My friend didn't. It would not do any good, she
said resignedly, and then spoke of how her 12-year-old daughter is repeatedly
told at school that all Chechens are criminals and that nobody likes them.
Since the day that then-President Vladimir Putin spoke on television of
wasting Chechen terrorists in the outhouse, hatred of Caucasus natives has
become all but socially acceptable. Once again, a subgroup of the population
has been declared outlaws and potential terrorists, satisfying people's urge to
find a clearly identifiable enemy who can be blamed for all that is wrong in
the country. While there has been no lack of speeches calling for tolerance and
condemning racist and anti-Semitic attacks, the situation barely changes.
The Soviet Union was anything but tolerant. But since its collapse, a
gnawing feeling of inferiority has crept into Russian society. Both the state
and openly racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic groups - of which there are
dozens, as well as more than 100 clearly xenophobic publications - increasingly
ignore the country's multi-ethnic character. In an everyday context, this is
reflected in slogans like "Russia for Russians," which really means white
European Russians.
The attacks therefore are directed in equal measure against people from
the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, as well as Russian citizens from
the Caucasus or who belong to one of the country's 90 national minorities. The
state hypocritically expresses its concern while doing nothing to oppose it,
because too many officials are only too willing to exploit such sentiments.
Susanne Scholl is Moscow-bureau-chief of-Austrian Public Television. Her
latest book is "Daughters of the War: Surviving in Chechnya." © Project
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