RUSSIA: Human rights groups are warning of a surge in skinhead violence in Russia after a string of high-profile race crimes, including the brutal stabbing of an eight-year old girl. Daniel McLaughlin reports from Moscow
Khursheda Sultanova, from Tajikistan in Central Asia, was knifed to death in the courtyard of her St Petersburg home this month, the latest victim of violent ultra-nationalist groups whose baleful profile is growing across Russia. Her killers allegedly chanted "Russia for the Russians" as they attacked her.
Two days after her murder, a war memorial in the same city was defaced with swastikas, and the same Nazi symbol was daubed across some 50 Jewish graves at a major St Petersburg cemetery last Saturday, along with anti-Semitic slogans.
That image dominated the front page of the influential Izvestia newspaper yesterday, above the reported findings of Mr Alexander Tarasov, a sociologist at the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, who has studied the relentless rise of Russian skinhead gangs, from only a few dozen members in 1992 to some 50,000 now.
Mr Tarasov says Moscow now hosts at least 5,000 active skinheads, and St Petersburg up to 3,000, and warns that they are developing worrying ties to right-wing political groups and the security services, including the crack OMON unit.
"A certain amount of information has accumulated to suggest that Nazi skinheads are being encouraged, organised and used by rightist circles in Russia," Mr Tarasov writes, blaming vast disparities in wealth in modern Russia for encouraging extremist views.
"And in 2002 it was established that Nazi skinheads from the openly fascist People's National Party are being trained at the base of the Moscow OMON unit by OMON trainers."
In last December's parliamentary elections, a strong showing from the far-right Liberal Democratic Party and the Motherland bloc - one of whose leaders is a nationalist firebrand - prompted defeated liberals to warn of growing xenophobia in Russia.
Jewish graves and monuments are regularly vandalised by skinheads, and attacks on Jews still occur in a country where anti-Semitism was rampant in Tsarist times and was an often-powerful component of Soviet propaganda.
Russia's Chechens are a more common target for physical violence though, and are easily demonised after almost a decade of war in their homeland, where thousands of troops and civilians have died and separatist rebels still kill Moscow's soldiers every day.
Amnesty International warned this week of a surge in anti-Chechen sentiment in Russia following the February 6th explosion on a Moscow metro train that killed at least 40 people. The Kremlin blamed a Chechen suicide bomber for the attack.
"The authorities must take all necessary steps to protect potential victims in line with their international obligations, and uphold constitutional guarantees in relation to equality of citizens," Amnesty said. The group said major attacks blamed on Chechen rebels were regularly followed by a surge in illegal detentions of Chechens and attacks on people who look like they are from the North Caucasus region.
Amnesty also urged Moscow's authorities to act against an extremist group that is advertising a public rally under the slogan "Cleanse Moscow of Chechen Bandits!" Moscow's thousands of African and Asian students also live in fear of skinhead attack.
After a fire at a university dormitory last November killed almost 40 students, many survivors asked why emergency services based nearby had taken so long to reach the inferno, and urged police to investigate the possibility of arson by far-right gangs who had threatened to burn down the building several times.
Investigators said the fire was an accident, but students' suspicion of foul play was compounded by continued racist attacks on campus.
Mr Joseph Gyorke, the chief Moscow representative of the UN Commission for Refugees, said the city's reaction to the blaze only reinforced his fears for foreigners in Russia.
"I'm very worried by the question of rising xenophobia in Russia," he said.
"Look what's going on: on Monday in Moscow a hostel burns, some 40 foreign students die, and on Tuesday, 24 hours later, right next door, a group of skinheads attacks some black students. And society doesn't show the slightest reaction. In all my 62 years I can't remember such indifference."