Hate crimes in Russia: Citizens of former Soviet republics fear Russia’s streets. Part 3

“Go ahead and write it!” said Nikolay Bondarik, commander of the Saint Petersburg Russian Guard. “I wouldn’t intervene if I saw skinheads attacking a Tajik! It would be stupid for me as a leader of Russia’s nationalist and patriotic movement to suffer at the hands of skinheads!”

I went to see Bondarik because the only way to stop skinheads from acting out against non-Slavs is to ask nationalists who are recognized by the movement to appeal to the masses. It would have been wonderful if Dmitry Bobrov had made the announcement, but he’s in prison. His contacts were frightened when I explained the situation over email, so we had to go with the most available option.

We chose Bondarik from those who aren’t in jail. He’s a nationalist with a long history of “patriotism.” He was one of the first people convicted of a hate crime in Russia in 1994.

Our operation was surprisingly easy. Bondarik was very composed, likely because he planned on being sent to jail the following day for holding an unsanctioned “Russian March.” This is what he asked us to pass along to the skinheads:

“Dear Friends! If you are genuine Russian patriots who care with all your heart about the fate of the Russian people and our country, then quit the foolishness! Russia will be no better off should you attack a Tajik with your friends and get sent to prison for 10 years. If you want to help your people, then join patriotic political parties. Yes! You must take part in meetings, pickets and distribute leaflets. I am speaking to you as my brothers. I will be sorry if your fate is ruined and you end up spending your near future in prison. No one will be any worse off but you.”

Maybe his message will affect someone. But that’s unlikely. The young boys who go hunting for non-Russians at local metro stations don’t want to get organized or attend meetings. They have a different mentality than the police force, which consolidated its efforts to catch Bondarik the following day in Saint Petersburg. The number 6,000 policemen comes to mind… Heavy jeeps lined up along Nevsky Prospect. Small “State Electrics” vans hid in the alleys. Armed police were packed inside. Bondarik wanted his arrest and trial to be a loud scandal, but things didn’t go his way. He was caught so quickly the telephone operators didn’t have time to turn on their cameras. There were about 12 policemen for each participant in the Russian March.

Standing there, waiting for the participants to be dispersed, I thought that if so many policemen monitored the metro we’d have no problems with skinheads attacking non-Slavs.

An elevator, Akhmet and a dog

It’s impossible to send all skinheads to jail, just as it’s impossible to kill all foreigners.

“There are 25 million of us non-Russians here,” Tuvinian journalist Sayana Mongush said. “What are they going to do with us all? A long time ago I could have complained to the District Communist Party. But what can I do now?”

The problem has nothing to do with the lack of a complaint book. The Strasbourg Court could easily serve as a substitute for the District Communist Party. But Russia no longer has a governmental organ that focuses only on ethic-related issues. After the Ministry of Ethnic Affairs was dismantled in 2002, the Ministry of Regional Development began to handle these issues.

Tolerance is the polar opposite of xenophobia. It’s a unfortunate concept as discredited as the words “patriot,” “liberal” and “democrat.” Of course, it’s impossible to force a nation to fall in love with foreigners over night, but there are solutions. For three years a special program has operated in Saint Petersburg — one of Russia’s most xenophobic cities — encouraging tolerance. The program has printed posters with calenders about how to live peacefully. Maybe that will help.

“Russian March” in Saint Petersburg. There were about 12 policemen for every participant in the Russian March.

It’s wrong to think that nothing is being done to promote tolerance in Russia. An entire state program existed until 2005 that was managed by top European specialists from the European Commission (TASIS). I took a look at their textbook. It was sadly upsetting.

For example: “A young boy named Akhmet moved to Moscow with his parents not long ago, and became friends with a local girl named Vera. They visited each other at home and drank tea. Several days later Vera greeted Akhmet in the elevator after returning home from walking her dog. But Akhmet didn’t respond. Instead, he crowded into the the corner of the elevator and stood there quietly. Reason: Akhmet’s religion considers dogs to be dirty animals. Lesson: Vera should have left the elevator right away so as not to offend Akhmet.” They don’t mention that Akhmet lives in Moscow and needs to get used to the Russian way of life.

This option might suit the British, but certainly not the Russians. The British went as far as refusing to use “The Three Little Pigs” at schools to appease their large Muslim minority. That’s how most programs work in the West. But that simply won’t pass here.

We can’t fight xenophobia on separate streets or cities. We need to clean the air throughout the entire country. First, we need to solve our problems with migration and crimes against ethnic Russians. We can’t sit back and rely on the government to fix the situation. Xenophobia is growing like a cancer. It’s so widespread in Russia it’s difficult to determine where it starts and where it ends. What’s the solution? We need to educate ourselves and our youth. This goes for everyone — our policemen, teachers, judges, journalists and doctors. We need to set daily limitations for ourselves to change the way we think and the situation at large. READ MORE

Hate crimes in Russia: Citizens of former Soviet republics fear Russia’s streets. Part 2

Skinheads have already killed 57 people in Russia in 2008. Why are citizens of former Soviet republics afraid to roam Russia’s streets?

I’m riding the same metro line in Saint Petersburg where Sayana Mongush was beaten in December 2007. I see Tajiks sitting in the corner of the car quietly with their caps pulled down over their eyes. I also see peoples from the North Caucasus staring ahead fearlessly, prepared for a confrontation. And I blush. This is xenophobia.

Everyone has these feelings – only the degree varies from person to person.

You can learn to restrain yourself. You can turn your back on skinheads attacking a migrant, or scream “Hit me instead!” as did an elderly Russian woman in the same metro car as Mongush. But one thing is clear. If internal limitations aren’t set, it’s easy to get carried away on both a personal and national level. Deep down many people have the “fascist seed.” It only needs to be fed. There’s nothing simpler.

An incident in the history of the Polish city Kielce is a model demonstration of how xenophobia works.

It was 1946. World War II was over and nearly all Europe’s Jews had been killed. The world had learned the horrid truth of the Nazi deathcamps Auschwitz and Treblinka. But new pogroms began. And these were orchestrated by Poles – not Hitler’s army.

A young Pole went to visit his sister in secret in a neighboring town. He returned home three days later. Afraid his parents would reprimand him for his actions, he decided to lie. He told them he had been held captive in a cellar by a group of strangers who spoke a foreign tongue.

The boy walked through Kielce with a group of local men, looking for the home where he had been held captive. He pointed to the first Jewish home he saw. His elders paid no mind that the house didn’t have a cellar. Forty-six people died as a result.

Of course, similar tragedies have transpired in the newly independent states – specifically in Karabakh, Transnistria and Fergana. Russians are all too familiar with these stories.

Xenophobia isn’t the biggest problem facing Russian society, says the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, but it’s grave nonetheless. Forty-four percent of Russians disagree with the slogan, “Russia for Russians,” while the remaining 56 percent went from Soviet internationalism to Russian nationalism in only 15 years. How did this happen? READ MORE

Hate crimes in Russia: Citizens of former Soviet republics fear Russia’s streets. Part 1

Naziq Eygesheva is slight at only 58 centimeters with a scratch across her nose. She’s sitting in the thick of a large armchair staring at me frighteningly. There’s another scar on her temple, 6 more on her hands and one more on her left breast. The doctors say she was lucky. The knife got stuck in her jacket and missed her heart by half a centimeter. Naziq is a 20-year-old Kyrgyz girl who was attacked by skinheads in Moscow.

Naziq lived in Russia’s capital for nearly a year. Her dream was to enroll in the Medical Academy. Naziq says she didn’t used to be afraid of living in Moscow. She thought skinheads only attacked foreigners who didn’t speak Russian, or dressed like villagers. In fact, she felt right at home. Naziq had graduated from a Russian school in Bishkek with perfect grades and could recite Akhmatova and Tsetaev by heart. Her mother, Pazilat Nasibova, was a Russian citizen and gynecologist with a 30-year history in the profession. Pazilat had always told her daughter: “We need to learn from the Russians! How they walk, dress, study and live. You can only expect kindness from them!”

Naziq knew something awful was going to happen on that fateful day in late January 2008, although she had never been the victim of an ethnic conflict before. She stood inside the entrance of the Kitay-Gorod metro station and waited. She desperately didn’t want to walk home alone. Naziq sent text messages to all her friends, asking if they could escort her home. Everyone was busy except Marat Akmatov. He probably had a bit of a crush on Naziq, even though they had only met once before. It took them nearly half an hour to make the 7-minute walk home. They talked about how Marat, who was 21, missed his mother who he hadn’t seen in almost a year. He said he planned on visiting her soon.

It was still early evening – around 20:30. All the sudden, a group of skinheads appeared out of nowhere with knives. Naziq fell to the ground almost immediately. Meanwhile, they dragged Marat into the bushes. He had no chance to survive. They cut his throat and stabbed him 62 times. Naziq lay there in the snow, closed her eyes and wondered why this was happening.

“Are you dead yet, bitch?” she heard one of the skinheads say. And the gang disappeared as quietly as they had arrived.

“Not all Russians are like this!” a friend of Naziq’s mother told her in the ambulance, crying and laying her coat beneath the girl’s bloodied body. Naziq would later hear this phrase on numerous occasions – from doctors, patients at the hospital and neighbors. Shortly after the incident, someone put an envelope in her mother’s mailbox with 1,000 rubles and a note reading: “We live in a neighboring building. A policeman came by and asked us if we saw what happened the night when two people were killed near our home. We didn’t see anything, but we’d like to give you our financial support. We were told you are relatives of the deceased.”

“Maybe we weren’t even attacked by Russians,” Naziq said hopefully. Although she wants to believe this is true, I know she asked her relative to hide the kitchen knife before we met as she feared skinheads had hired me to kill her.

“I thought I’d become a doctor, start working and come home when it was still light and nothing would happen. But now they’re even killing during the day! It’s just better to go abroad where there are lots of Asians,” she said. Her mother, who has helped hundreds of Russian women give birth, froze when she heard these words. READ MORE