http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/06/09/001.html
Friday, June 9, 2006. Issue 3429. Page 1.
7 Men Beat Tajik Students in Dorm
By Carl Schreck and Natasha Rotstein
Special to The Moscow Times
Natasha Rotstein / For MT
Campus security guards checking student identification cards Thursday at
the entrance to the dormitory where a group of 10 Tajik students were attacked.
Seven men who identified themselves as police officers attacked and robbed a
group of 10 Tajik students in a dormitory room Wednesday night, sparking new
fears about the safety of dark-skinned students in Russia.
Five students at the State Management University in southeastern Moscow were
hospitalized with cuts and bruises, and the dormitory was placed under high
security Thursday.
Several accounts said police officers were carrying out a revenge attack but
had targeted the wrong group of students.
The Tajik Embassy said it was extremely concerned about the incident and the
safety of the more than 2,000 Tajik students enrolled in Moscow schools but
that it was too early to say whether racism had played a role in the attack.
Some students said they had no doubt that the attack was racially motivated.
Investigators were treating the incident as a standard robbery and assault.
The City Prosecutor's Office, which has taken over the investigation of the
case from district prosecutors, said a man in civilian clothes knocked on the
door of a room in the dormitory on Ryazansky Prospekt, near the Vykhino metro
station, at about 8 p.m. He flashed a police badge and ordered the Tajik
students to open the door.
"When they opened the door for him, six men also in civilian clothes followed
him into the room and started beating the students with lug wrenches and
kicking them," prosecutor's office spokesman Sergei Marchenko said.
One of the students dropped his cell phone, which the attackers grabbed before
fleeing the scene, Marchenko said.
The Tajik Embassy said at least 10 students had gathered in the room to eat
dinner together. The assailants stole money and cell phones from several
students, it said.
Campus security guards clustered around the main entrance to the 18-story,
lime-green dormitory Thursday afternoon, allowing in only students with ID
cards.
Speaking outside the building, campus security chief Alexander Alexeyev said
several of the Tajik students were resting in their rooms. "The most important
thing is that the guys are alive and well," he said. He declined to release
their names, but said they were first-, second- and third-year students.
Several students milling around outside the dormitory were convinced the attack
was racially motivated.
"They were beaten because the color of their skin was different," said Shamil,
a 17-year-old first-year student from Dagestan.
Dark-skinned migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia are commonly targeted
by Moscow beat officers because they often lack registration and can be easily
extorted for bribes.
Wednesday's attack, however, was completely different.
Sergei Komkov, head of the All-Russia Education Foundation, said the students
had recognized one of the attackers as a beat officer stationed near the
Ryazansky Prospekt metro station who had clashed with a group of students from
Dagestan and Ingushetia a day earlier, Gazeta.ru reported.
Natasha Rotstein / For MT
A view of the 18-floor, lime-green dormitory where the attack took place.
He said the officer had showed up at the dormitory with a number of friends on
Wednesday night to seek revenge -- but apparently had picked the wrong room. He
said two attackers had worn police uniform pants.
Ekho Moskvy reported the dormitory's supervisor was the wife of the deputy head
of the Vykhino police precinct and had had a run-in with an Ingush man at the
dormitory on Tuesday. It said she had asked the police to come deal with the
man the next day and the Tajik students were mistakenly targeted.
Law enforcement officers in Russia, like their counterparts in the West, tend
to be more prone to xenophobia than the rest of the population, said Vladimir
Novitsky, legal director at the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, which tracks
racially motivated attacks in Russia.
"It's no secret that tolerance is not very well developed in Russia, and even
less so in the law enforcement community," he said.
Police declined to deny or confirm the attackers were officers. "They showed a
police badge when they entered the dormitory, but whether it was a real badge
is still unclear," police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev said. "We're still trying
to establish their identities." But a duty officer at a precinct in southeast
Moscow told Ekho Moskvy a team of officers had in fact visited the dormitory
but that "no one touched the students."
"The situation was exactly the opposite," the unidentified officer said. "The
students were arguing among themselves, and the officers arrived after the
incident started and broke things up."
Later in the afternoon, the City Prosecutor's Office released a statement
saying that only its information could be considered "official and objective"
because "it is based on the materials of the investigation."
Mukhammad Egamzod, a spokesman for the Tajik Embassy, expressed shock over the
attack.
"Such crimes, often committed by skinheads, have become common on the streets,"
Egamzod said. "But it's shocking that a group of policemen could break into a
dormitory and attack them with such impudence."
He said it remained unclear whether racism had played a role, "but I think that
could end up being the case."
Human rights watchdogs have noted a spike in racially motivated attacks in
recent years; dark-skinned migrants from the Caucasus or Central Asia, such as
Tajiks, are common targets of police harassment.
Several students from Africa have been assaulted or killed by young people in
apparent racially motivated attacks around the country in recent months.
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