On the 11th of February, 2009 Information and Analytical Center SOVA, which documents the activities of radical nationalist, neo-fascist, and xenophobic groups in the Russian Federation, presented its annual report “Radical nationalism and counteraction to it in 2008”. The report is based on the results of SOVA daily monitoring. The goal of this report is to identify major trends and problems in this sphere. Representatives from many human rights organizations, such as Moscow Helsinki Group, Glasnost Protection Foundation and many journalists participated in the event.
The authors of the report mentioned such current trends as consolidation of Nazi-skinhead groups, modifications of attacks, polarization and crisis phenomenon within ultra-right groups. According to the data in the presented report, a number of victims of xenophobia and racial violence in 2008 was not less then 525 people, 97 from them died (last year the numbers were 605 an 85 correspondently). Attacks were registered in 44 regions of Russia; the most problematic ones are Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. Main risk groups are natives of Central Asia and Caucasus. In many cases the attacks were camouflaged as rapes or robberies to conceal the “ethnic hate” motive. Some improvements were registered in legal practice of counteraction to extremism – 33 guilty verdicts (10 more in comparison with the last year), were delivered taking in account “ethnic hate” motive, but still it needs further adjustment to the current situation.
The presentation took place at the Independent Press Center in Moscow, which was under parole of about two decades of policemen. The security measures were taken in connection with the death threat that was sent to a human rights research center on the eve of the presentation. The sender told Galina Kozhevnikova, deputy head of the human rights research center SOVA to “prepare” to be the next in line, and made reference to recently slain lawyer Stanislav Markelov. Markelov was shot at the same time as Anastasia Baburova, a Novaya Gazeta journalist after the press-conference at the same Independent Press Center. The message was signed by a Russian neo-Nazi group known as “BTO” a day after SOVA announced plans to hold a press conference on the rise in related crimes.
An e-mail singled out journalists, editors, experts, and university professors who cover anti-extremism because, it said, such assassinations get more press coverage. The message said the group had been monitoring Kozhevnikova’s public engagements and publications, and specifically SOVA press conference, at which she was a speaker.
This was not the first time she has been threatened but that this was the most direct and open threat she has received. She said neo-Nazis in the Russian Federation maintain Web sites and blogs where names of journalists and human rights activists, including her own, are posted as enemies of the state.
