Racial tension on the rise in Russia Vladimir Radyuhin | The Hindu | September 16, 2006
http://www.hindu.com/2006/09/16/stories/2006091605071000.htm ON SEPTEMBER 2, the sleepy provincial town of Kondopoga in Russia's northern region of Karelia broke into violent riots as hundreds of young ethnic Slavs attacked kiosks, shops, and restaurants of Chechen and Azeri businessmen. The riots, triggered by the killing of three Russians in a café brawl, came two weeks after a bomb blast killed 12 and wounded about 50 people, mostly of Asian origin, at a bustling Moscow market. The bomb was set off by three ethnic Russians in protest against what they called "too many natives of Asia" in Moscow. These two incidents marked a new high point in a surging wave of ethnic hate crimes in Russia that threatens to upset inter-racial peace and national stability. According to the Sova human rights group, ethnic violence in Russia has been growing at 20 to 30 per cent a year. Thirty-three people have died in racist attacks since the beginning of the year and 280 wounded. Ethnic hate attacks have been reported in 33 Russian regions, but most were registered in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Until last month race-based violence was largely associated with the problem of skinheads, Russia's young nationalist fringe, who attack dark-skinned people, mostly from Central Asia or the Caucasus, in the streets or on trains. In one such incident in May a group of young men yelling "Glory to Russia" stabbed an Armenian teenager to death on a crowded commuter train outside Moscow. Foreigners, mostly students from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, are also regular targets of skinhead attacks. An Indian medical student, Kishore Kumar Anjangi, was stabbed near his dormitory in St. Petersburg in April. A month earlier another student from India was beaten up in Voronezh. However, the market bombing in Moscow and the riots in Karelia added a new dimension to the problem of ethnic violence. For the first time the attackers in Moscow resorted to terror bombing of a public place. Also, the arrested suspects did not belong to any neo-Nazi group, but were college students who had learnt how to build a bomb on the Internet in order, in their words, to "get revenge on the `illegals' filling up Russia." The anti-Caucasian riots in Karelia were also different from earlier ethnic violence. It was the first time that a fairly large town of 40,000 rose against immigrants. The riots in Kondopoga were preceded by a 2,000-strong rally where residents demanded that all the Caucasians be evicted. The rise of ethnic tension in Russia is directly linked to the fall of the Soviet system and the subsequent transition to a market economy. In the erstwhile Soviet Union, which had far more ethnic groups than Russia has today, racial peace had been maintained through a well-articulated ethnic strategy based on an ideology of internationalism and carefully calibrated balancing of the interests of different ethnic groups in regional government. Ethnic reprisals under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, when Chechens and some other ethnic groups were exiled to Central Asia, were an exception rather than a rule. All government officials, whatever their ethnic identity, were required to be members of the Soviet Communist Party, which firmly put down even the slightest manifestations of ethnic arrogance or discrimination on the basis of race. State control over the economy and the one-party political system were, of course, instrumental in enforcing racial harmony. Still, a huge number of inter-racial marriages showed that the policy was largely a success. Post-Soviet Russia has neither formulated a coherent ethnic policy nor developed instruments for enforcing it. Russia's pro-Western reformers have thoughtlessly embraced an ultra-liberal economic model based on the principle "the market will take care of everything." Awash with petro-dollars and suffering from an acute demographic crisis, Russia has become an attractive destination for millions of job seekers from the former Soviet republics, most of which have visa-free accords with Russia. The government says Russia badly needs immigrant labour as its population is going to shrink by five million in 10 years from the current level of 143 million, with an even steeper decline expected among the working age population. But the authorities have done precious little to regulate immigration flows. According to various estimates, there are 10 million to 15 million immigrants in Russia today mostly from the Muslim regions of former Soviet Central Asia and Caucasus. Such a massive influx of migrants has been a big cultural and psychological shock for the predominantly Russian population of large urban centres. In Soviet times, migration was tightly controlled and went in the opposite direction as qualified Russians were encouraged to take up jobs in less developed ethnic republics of the vast country. In the past few years, closely knit and enterprising ethnic communities, primarily of Chechen, Azeri, and Central Asian origin, have brought under their control markets, restaurants, and hotels in many Russian cities. With unemployment in many regions running high, such aggressive behaviour of newcomers has evoked sharp resentment from the local population. In Kondopoga people complained that immigrants had ousted locals from the food and clothes markets resorting to threats and violence. Karelia regional head Sergei Katanandov admits that the killing of Slavs by Chechens was "the last drop that made the cup spill over" in Kondopoga. "The behaviour of young Caucasians has been outrageous, they terrorised the town," the regional head was quoted as saying after the riots. He concedes that law enforcement agencies were largely responsible for allowing these excesses. Similar conflicts, though on a smaller scale, have been reported in half a dozen other regions of Russia. Many blame them on rampant corruption in the law enforcement agencies. Protesters in Kondopoga said the Caucasians had bribed police and government officials to obtain residency permits, buy property, and get away with bullying and crimes. When two dozen Chechens were thrashing Slavs with iron rods in the September 2 incident, a couple of police cars were spotted parked nearby, but the officers did not intervene. "It is government corruption that led up to riots in Kondopoga," said Parliamentarian Gennaday Gudkov, member of the lower house security committee. "Officials were paid to close their eyes to the abuses and criminal activities of the Caucasians." A further problem is that Russia's cumbersome and controversial legislation makes it so difficult and time-consuming to obtain an official status that up to 80 per cent of migrants prefer to work in Russia illegally. This exposes them to all kinds of abuses from both employers and police who regularly collect bribes from them. In an effort to reduce the number of illegal migrants, the Russian Parliament has greatly simplified rules for the registration of foreigners allowing them to send in their papers by mail instead of going through the current bureaucratic hassle of applying for and obtaining registration documents. The new rules, effective from 2007, are expected to increase the flow of labour migrants to Russia. Political risks Meanwhile, experts warn that uncontrolled immigration is fraught with political risks. Migrants already constitute more than 10 per cent of Russia's population, which is considered a critical proportion: anything above this level poses a threat to the national stability of a country, experts say. They point out that France, which was rocked by ethnic violence last year, has 6 million migrants, which is exactly 10 per cent of the country's population. "Russia is repeating the mistakes France and other European nations have made by failing to assimilate the migrants," says leader of the nationalist Eurasia Movement Alexander Dugin. Indeed, culturally dissimilar immigrants prefer to live in compact communities, ignoring local laws and traditions and refusing to assimilate. It was only last year that the authorities started drawing up a programme to ensure non-compact settlement of immigrants and facilitate their cultural assimilation by offering them training in the Russian language, history, and culture. However it is not clear yet when the programme may be ready. Under another programme to control migration processes, it is planned to encourage ethnic Russians living in other former Soviet states to resettle to the native land. But the programme is likely to have only limited impact since those Russians who did not return to Russia after the break-up of the Soviet Union have adjusted by now to life in the newly independent states. Each new wave of immigration to Russia from the ex-Soviet states brings in people with increasingly different cultural background for the young generation was born after the collapse of the Soviet Union and never lived in the single country. This increases the potential for ethnic tension and conflict. National polls show that Russians are growing increasingly hostile towards immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia. According to the Levada polling service, 58 per cent of Russians support the slogan "Russia for the Russians." Russians are against immigrants buying property, setting up businesses or getting government jobs. Rising intolerance provides fertile ground for excesses like the bombing of Asians at the Moscow market and the anti-Caucasian riots in Karelia. However, Russia has little choice but to learn to live with immigrants. Economists have estimated that to support the current 6- 7 per cent growth rates Russia must annually attract at least 1 million migrants in the years to come. -- This is ZESTGlobal. Post articles on international affairs to [email protected] If you got this mail as a forward, subscribe to ZESTGlobal by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/join/ Yahoo! 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