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April 03, 2006

Russian Ombudsman Condemns Hate Crimes

Human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin (file photo) (epa)

April 3, 2006 -- Russia's human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, today accused members of Russian law-enforcement agencies and individual regional leaders of covering up and condoning racially motivated violence.

Lukin was commenting on the attacks by skinheads in Moscow on April 1 on the culture minister of Kabardino-Balkaria, Zaur Tutov, and on April 3 on NTV journalist Elkhan Mirzoyev, who is from the North Caucasus.


Tutov was attacked by 15-20 men, who, he said, shouted racist slogans. Mirzoyev was beaten up in a central Moscow metro station by a gang of men and women who told him he had no place in Russia.


Lukin praised the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office for its April 3 decision to order Moscow prosecutors to reclassify the attack on Tutov, labeling it as a hate crime rather than hooliganism.


Moscow prosecutors had initially said there was no evidence to suggest the attack was racially motivated.


There has been a surge in racially motivated attacks in Russia in recent years, many of them directed against people from the Caucasus and Central Asia.


Critics of Russia's law-enforcement agencies say they often treat racially motivated attacks as random violence and that this is encouraging a feeling of impunity among extremist groups.


(Interfax, AFP, AP)


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