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Racist Murders Deal Further Blow To Russia's Standing In Armenia

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  • Racist Murders Deal Further Blow To Russia's Standing In Armenia

    RACIST MURDERS DEAL FURTHER BLOW TO RUSSIA'S STANDING IN ARMENIA
    By Emil Danielyan

    Eurasia Daily Monitor, DC
    May 2 2006

    The latest upsurge in murders of dark-skinned immigrants living
    in Russia has not only reinforced the country's image as a hotbed
    of xenophobic extremism, it also has negative implications for the
    future of its relations with one of its most loyal allies. The April
    22 fatal stabbing of an ethnic Armenian youth in Moscow has caused
    an uproar in Armenia that is likely to add to the ongoing erosion of
    the traditionally strong pro-Russian sentiment in the South Caucasus
    nation.

    The 17-year-old Vigen Abramiants was killed on a Moscow subway platform
    in full view of other riders. The next day a well-known Armenian film
    director, Mikael Dovlatian, was attacked and seriously injured by a
    group of neo-Nazi skinheads as he entered the same underground system
    where the police presence is unusually strong.

    Similar individuals are believed to have stabbed to death a Tajik
    immigrant, also in the Russian capital, on April 24. A 23-year-old
    Indian student and a 36-year-old Turkish man living in St. Petersburg
    were more fortunate, surviving separate racist attacks reported on
    April 22.

    The violence followed what has become a familiar pattern in Russia,
    where hardly a week goes by without reports of rampaging youths
    indiscriminately wounding or killing people from the Caucasus, Central
    Asia, Africa, and even Latin America. The Russian anti-racism watchdog
    group Sova has registered more than a hundred racist attacks since
    January, saying that at least 14 people have already been murdered
    in Russia this year because of their non-Slavic looks. Sova puts the
    death toll from such incidents reported last year at 28.

    The latest spate of killings is widely linked to Adolf Hitler's
    birthday -- April 20. The founder of Nazi Germany may be responsible
    for the deaths of millions of Russians during World War II, but
    he seems exceedingly (and shockingly) popular with scores of young
    people in modern-day Russia. According to Russian media estimates,
    in St. Petersburg alone (a city that saw at least one million of
    its residents starve to death during the infamous German blockade
    of 1941-44) there are some 15,000 adherents of Russian neo-Nazi
    organizations.

    With neo-Nazi and other extremist literature and propaganda widely
    available on the streets and especially on the Internet, Russian
    law-enforcement authorities and courts have been remarkably lenient
    towards hate groups, routinely portraying racially motivated crimes
    as mere acts of "hooliganism." A case in point is the trial in St.

    Petersburg of seven teenagers who were convicted of collectively
    stabbing to death a 9-year-old Tajik girl but were sentenced to only
    between 18 months and five years in prison last February. A jury
    found that they were hooligans, rather than racists.

    The Moscow police were likewise quick to suggest that the Abramiants
    murder resulted from a dispute over a teenage girl allegedly
    offended by the Armenian. This official theory infuriated leaders
    and many members of the large Armenian community in Russia. Even
    the Kremlin-connected chairman of the Union of Armenians of Russia,
    Ara Abramian, accused the authorities of "connivance" in the young
    man's violent death. Speaking in Moscow on April 27, Abramian said
    the failure to prosecute the perpetrators of the vast majority of
    racist crimes only encourages more such attacks. Abramiants is the
    sixth Armenian murdered in Russia this year, he added.

    The furor sparked a week-long outburst of anti-Russian rhetoric by
    Armenia's electronic and, especially, print media that regularly carry
    reports on the desecration of Armenian churches and cemeteries in
    southern Russia. "In no other country of the world except Armenia's
    supposed ally Russia, do Armenians get killed in the street because
    of being Armenian," the Yerevan daily Haykakan Zhamanak observed on
    April 29. "It is evident that the Russian authorities are secretly
    encouraging activities of those [neo-Nazi] groups," charged another
    newspaper, 168 Zham. "Russia has stepped onto a path leading to its
    transformation into a fascist state," agreed Vartan Harutiunian,
    a human-rights campaigner and Soviet-era dissident, in an interview
    with the daily Aravot. Many Russians, he claimed, see nothing wrong in
    "the murder of a few Armenians, Azerbaijanis, or Tajiks."

    Newspapers also lashed out at Armenia's government for its continuing
    unwillingness to officially protest to Moscow, with Aravot condemning
    the stance as "odd and outrageous." "The Armenian authorities
    are subservient [to Russia] to such an extent that they are even
    scared of defending the interests and rights of their citizens and
    compatriots in the territory of our purported ally," wrote Chorrord
    Ishkhanutiun. "How many more Armenians need to be killed in Russia in
    order to prompt a reaction [from official Yerevan?]," asked Taregir,
    another paper critical of the government.

    Such comments cannot fail to have an impact on public opinion in
    Armenia, which has traditionally been sympathetic to Russia and formed
    a key building block of the close Russian-Armenian political, military,
    and economic relations. But it has clearly undergone important changes
    in recent years, with opinion polls suggesting that a rising number
    of Armenians see their country's future in NATO and the European
    Union. This trend may only accelerate as a result of a growing
    sense that the Russians look down on even the most loyal of their
    dark-skinned neighbors.

    Golos Armenii, a Russian-language newspaper critical of the West,
    summed up the changing public mood in Armenia on April 27 when it
    suggested that violent xenophobia is becoming a key feature of Russian
    society. "Even those who are very sympathetic to Russia understand
    that that country has no future," it wrote.

    (Haykakan Zhamanak, April 29; Aravot, April 28; 168 Zham, April 27-28;
    Golos Armenii, Azg, April 27; Novye izvestiya, April 26.)
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