Just days after thousands of nationalists and football hooligans clashed with police in central Moscow, a spate of race-hate attacks and reports of more clashes to come have left the Russian capital on edge.
The riots in Moscow’s central Manezh Square, triggered by the death of a Muscovite football fan in a brawl with a group of men from the North Caucasus, was followed on Wednesday by further disturbances as ethnic Russians and internal migrants gathered for a confrontation near a key train terminal.
Police made over a thousand arrests, confiscating everything from knives to stun guns in a successful attempt to prevent new large-scale disorder.
But law enforcement agencies have been largely powerless to stop isolated cases of violence, with at least two race-hate murders of non-Slavs among a plethora of assaults since Saturday’s disturbances.
This weekend may see more trouble in Moscow, with Russian media reports suggesting that a nationalist rally has been “arranged” for the north-east Ostankino region, and that Caucasus migrants are planning to gather at a separate location near the city centre.
In one of the most startling non-lethal incidents, two women were reported to have shot a migrant worker in an all-night shop in the south of Moscow early on Sunday. The SOVA centre, which monitors racist attacks in Russia, said robbery was not the motive for the shooting, which left the 24-year-old victim with serious chest and neck injuries from rubber bullets.
Migrants have also carried out assaults, with a group of Dagestani students charged with injuring a Muscovite with a firearm firing rubber bullets a short distance from the city’s famed Gorky Park. Early on Friday, shots were fired from a similar weapon at three passers-by in the south of the city from a car with Dagestani number plates, a police source told RIA Novosti. There were no injuries, but the development is likely to further increase the fears of ordinary Muscovites caught up in the crossfire.
The clashes have not been confined to Moscow, with a ripple of ethnic unrest reported from Russia’s northern capital of St Petersburg to Krasnodar in the south, where police detained some 50 people on Thursday, confiscating axes and stun guns to avert rioting.
President Dmitry Medvedev has called the disorder a threat to the “stability” of the Russian state and has urged police to clamp down on nationalists.
The reaction of powerful Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been muted. Putin remained tight-lipped on the disturbances until yesterday, when he devoted less than five minutes to the subject in an over four-hour long address to the nation.
“It is necessary to crack down on any extremist acts,” he said. “A person from the Caucasus should not be afraid to go out in the streets of Moscow, and our ethnic Slavic citizens should not be afraid to live in North Caucasus republics.”
In response to the outbreak of racial violence, well-known satirical writer Viktor Shenderovich is planning a “Moscow for Everyone” rally in December 26 at downtown Pushkin Square.
Writing on his Live Journal account, Shenderovich urged ordinary Russians to attend the rally in defiance of nationalists whom he said were “dragging the country into a bloody mire from which it will not emerge.”
“Sometimes you need to put down your cup of coffee and rearrange your plans for the weekend,” he added, urging readers to act to ensure they do not live out their lives “under the rule of the demagogues and morons who have decided to categorize people according to the color of their skin and the shape of their skull.”
MOSCOW, December 17 (RIA Novosti)
