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Anti-Extremist Laws in Russia Misused to Target Human Rights, Religious Groups

10-8-2011

By Marc Jayson Climaco
Program and Communications
Anti-Extremist Law in Russia Targets Neo-Nazis and Human Rights Groups [ 12 min 17 s | 11.27 MB ] Play in Popup | Download (8412)

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This week’s FirstCastfeatures selective enforcement of Russia’s anti-extremist laws. The Russian Federation has experienced a dramatic upsurge in violent hate crimes over the past decade. According to the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, a leading Moscow-based NGO monitoring hate crimes, racist and other violent attacks by ultranationalist and neo-Nazi skinhead groups claimed as many as 470 lives since 2004 and peaked in 2008 and into 2009.

While Russia’s heightened prosecution of ultranationalist groups resulted in a decrease of violent hate crime, law enforcement and prosecutorial officials also use the same legislation to persecute nonviolent government critics including journalist, independent media and human rights organizations and religious organizations–draining resources away from police units tasked with combating real threats of racist violence.


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Posted in Blog | 5 Comments »

  • http://wpik.org Andrew Johnson

    Interesting that you want to stop repression of NGOs and a few hundred deaths in Russia, but you remain silent while tens of thousands are killed and displaced in Ambon and West Papua. Could the Freeport mine and profits enjoyed in New York and Los Angeles have something to do with the selective vision?

    • http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/about-us/staff/gabor-rona/ Marc Jayson Climaco, Human Rights First

      Thanks for your comment. Please check out “Our Work” on the navigation bar of this page. You’ll see the different programs that we run and countries in which we work and have specialty.

  • Em Chamberlin

    My friends and family in Russia have been attacked several times by these neo nazi groups. They have fire bombed places of worship and injured members of my family. I’m having trouble feeling like defending their human rights when they exist solely to deny the rights of others.

  • http://www.yellow-stars.com eslaporte

    You write here about Russia, but are you also aware that some of these “counter-terrorism” practices are going in Western countries too?

    We should all know about the freedom of movement restrictions in the form of “airport security” and the “no fly list.” The “counter-terrorism” regime has been aimed at anti-war activists, authors, journalists, as well as people who “look Muslim.”

    And – to speak of “waste of resources?” When we take a look at how much time and resources Western nations focus “Islamist and jihadists” in comparison to actual terrorist threat – we see these wasted resources.

    We should understand that what are defined as a “terrorist threat” are politically determined. This means that the actual security threats are ignored (from the radical right) for politically correct “threats” – from “Islamists and jihadists.”

    We also need to get away from political correctness in human rights activism. Human rights advocacy should be aimed at protecting all, as human rights are for everyone, not just politically correct groups. Human rights should also NOT be used as a whipping post for countries like Russia, as well as Iran and China. The is a need for human rights activism in the Western world!!