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Russia: A Timeline Of Recent Racial Incidents


Russian skinheads demonstrating in Kaliningrad (file photo) (ITAR-TASS) Below, RFE/RL presents an annotated timeline of racially motivated incidents in Russia since the February 9, 2004, stabbing of 9-year-old Khursheda Sultonova in St. Petersburg.


March 25, 2006: A 9-year-old mixed-race girl beaten and stabbed in the face and neck in St Petersburg.


March 24, 2006: A 34-year-old Ghanaian man beaten up in the Kolpino suburb of St. Petersburg.


March 22, 2006: A Russian court finds eight defendants guilty of "hooliganism" in connection with the 2004 stabbing death of a 9-year-old Tajik girl in St. Petersburg. A ninth defendant is acquitted. The verdicts are described by activists as "a moral catastrophe."


February 5, 2006: A man from Mali was stabbed to death in St. Petersburg.


Aleksandr Koptsev in court on March 21 (TASS)

January 11, 2006: A 20-year-old skinhead burst into Moscow's main synagogue and stabbed eight people with a hunting knife before he was wrestled to the floor and disarmed. Twenty-one-year-old Moscow resident Aleksandr Koptsev was sentenced to 13 years in prison on March 27.


January 9, 2006: Several Sudanese citizens, graduates of the Voronezh Medical Academy, attacked. Voronezh has seen numerous racially motivated attacks in recent years, including the deaths of two foreign students. In 2005, citizens of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, China, Peru, and Rwanda reported attacks.


December 25, 2005: Kanhem Leon, a student from Cameroon, is stabbed to death by skinheads in St Petersburg.


November 13, 2005: Timur Kacharava, an antifascist philosophy student and musician, is stabbed to death by skinheads in St Petersburg.


October 9, 2005: A student from Peru is killed in Voronezh on October 9, 2005. A group of about 20 youngsters attacked the 18-year-old student and his friends.


March 28, 2005: Assailants in St. Petersburg attack Angolan, Bangladeshi, and Chinese students in three separate weekend incidents.


January 14, 2005: Two rabbis attacked and beaten in downtown Moscow.


Khursheda Sultonova was stabbed to death in St. Petersburg on February 9, 2004 (courtesy photo)

October 14, 2004: A 20-year-old Vietnamese student is stabbed to death by skinheads in St Petersburg.


June 21, 2004: Nikolai Girenko, one of Russia’s leading experts on racism and xenophobia, is shot dead through the door of his apartment.


February 9, 2004: A gang of teenaged skinheads stabs to death a 9-year-old Tajik girl, Khursheda Sultonova, in St Petersburg.


(compiled by RFE/RL)

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