Minorities Under Siege: The Case of St. Petersburg

The Response to Hate Crimes

Appropriate application of the hate crimes legislation now in place is a critical means for the Russian government to respond more effectively to hate crimes. Russia laws today provide a basis for the investigation and prosecution of crimes with a racial, ethnic, or religious bias. These crimes can be prosecuted as more serious crimes with higher penalties: the Russian Criminal Code contains a general penalty enhancement provision (article 63) for "the commission of crimes with a motive of national, racial, religious hate or enmity…" In practice, however, this provision is rarely applied.

Other provisions of the Criminal Code that can be applied to violent hate crimes include article 105 (murder), article 111 (Deliberate infliction of grievous bodily harm), article 112 (Deliberate infliction of moderate bodily harm), and article 117 (Torture) defined as "the causing of physical or psychological suffering through systematic beatings or other violent actions…" Higher penalties are established for each of these crimes when committed "with a motive of national, racial, religious hatred or enmity."

The Criminal Code also provides for more severe punishment for the desecration of cemeteries when motivated by racist or religious animus (article 244). Article 282 on inciting hatred or enmity, as well as demeaning human dignity – generally reserved for cases of hate propaganda – has also been used in the case of violent crime.

The problem rests with both enforcement and prosecutorial discretion. Many hate crimes are investigated and prosecuted only as "hooliganism" – if they are registered and investigated at all. Nonetheless, the number of prosecutions for hate motivated crimes has been on the rise, even if such prosecutions still pale in comparison to the frequency of attacks.

Several St. Petersburg murder cases are in the process of being investigated and tried. In addition to those mentioned above, the October 2004 murder of Vietnamese student, Vu An Tuan, went to trial in February 2006. Fourteen persons, most of them minors, are being tried for murder with a racist motive.[33] In May, a St. Petersburg court began the trail of four men suspected in the assault on Congolese student, Roland Epassak, who was severely beaten in September 2005 and died that same night in the hospital. A racist motive is included in the charges.[34]

Meanwhile, the verdicts rendered in other cases to date raise concerns. In December 2005, two St. Petersburg courts handed down sentences – thought by human rights monitors to be mostly excessively lenient – against members of neo-Nazi groups Schultz-88 and Mad Crowd.

Ending a trial which lasted over two years, on December 9, 2005, a St. Petersburg court sentenced Dmitry Bobrov, the leader of a neo-Nazi group called Schultz-88, to six years imprisonment for violation of several articles of the Criminal Code, including article 282 on inciting hatred with the use of violence. Three other members of the group were given three-year suspended sentences and one person, a minor, was acquitted. Their crimes included attacks on a McDonald's restaurant, an assault on an Azeri man, an attack on two Chinese students, and two attacks against ethnic Armenians.[35] A few days later, on December 14, another St. Petersburg court sentenced five members of a neo-Nazi group by the name of Mad Crowd to sentences ranging from one year suspended to three years imprisonment for violation of article 282 on incitement. They were tried in connection with assaulting citizens of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and China in 2003.[36]

In another well-publicized recent case – the murder of a nine-year old Tajik girl – one defendant was acquitted of racist murder charges; instead the defendants were given sentences for hooliganism.      

On February 9, 2004, Yusuf Sultonov, an ethnic Tajik, was returning home following a walk with his nine-year old daughter, Khursheda, and his nephew, Alabir. They were attacked by a group of teenagers armed with knives and shouting "Russia for Russians." Khursheda died shortly after the attack, having received 11 knife wounds. In connection with this attack, eight young men, four of them minors, were detained and charged with hooliganism. One of the eight was charged additionally with murder motivated by ethnic hatred. On March 22, 2006, a jury found seven of the defendants guilty of the hooliganism charges. The defendant charged with murder, who was among those found guilty of hooliganism, was acquitted of the murder charge. He was sentenced for hooliganism to a prison term of 5.5 years (the maximum for acts of hooliganism committed by a group being 7 years). The other defendants were sentenced to prison terms of between 18 months and 3 years. The prosecution has filed an appeal.[37]

Verdicts such as this – relatively light sentences without any reference to the racist element of the crime – undermine confidence in the effectiveness of the criminal justice system's ability to quell the spate of racist violence.

That confidence is further undermined by the public statements of local officials and politicians, including those with responsibility for law enforcement and prosecution, in which they seek to downplay the severity of the problem or in some cases actually imply that the victims are responsible for their own plight.

On April 11, 2006, just four days after the murder of African student Lampsar Samba, Alexander Nevzorov, a local Member of Parliament from the pro-Putin United Russia Party, said: "Foreigners aren't saints," he said. "They can also get into fights, insult someone or seduce someone's wife. Why should this immediately be viewed as racism? Racism is not typical for St. Petersburg – everybody knows that."[38]

On April 21, at a meeting of the presidium of the city's public council on the subject of combating xenophobia and extremism, Mikhail Vanichkin, the head of the St. Petersburg police department, expressed his frustration with the pressure placed on the local police force: "The police are being tormented. Everyday this issue is raised with the governor, everyday I'm on the phone with representatives of the federal authorities… It's a shame that all our efforts are being spent on cases involving foreigners, yet attacks on our guys are not being investigated fully."[39] He was also reported to have stated that "those blacks don't pay for their dorm rooms, yet they go to night clubs where the entrance costs 1,500 rubles." [40]

At the same April 21 city council meeting, chief prosecutor Zaitsev declared the spate of hate crimes to be a provocation against the city's reputation – rather than a sign of growing extremism. He stated that there are only two extremist groups in St. Petersburg – Schultz-88 and Mad Crowd – key members of which had been sentenced in December 2005. He called on journalists to cover crimes against foreigners in a more correct manner so as not to encourage "the desire among certain people to stigmatize our city."[41] Yet his comments contradict what he had expressed in a letter to Governor Matvienko in December 2005, as reported by St. Petersburg internet newspaper Fontanka.ru, in which he admitted that racist violence was systemic and blamed the city government for not doing more to stop it.[42]

As noted, Matvienko has announced that she has taken the investigation of certain high-profile racist murders under her personal control. She has also called on university rectors to step up security for foreign students. Yet the local authorities have yet to outline and follow through with any comprehensive program to deal more coherently with racist violence.

Residents and activists in St. Petersburg have not sat by passively in the face of mounting racist violence. On March 25, 2006 about 300 anti-Fascists, members of liberal parties, and human rights activists demonstrated against the rise in racist violence. Following the April 7 murder of the Senegalese student, some 1,000 demonstrators again took to the streets to express their dismay and to demand a more vigorous government response.

On April 17, a number of leading human rights activists and civil society leaders sent an open letter to Governor Matvienko expressing their serious concern with the rise in "fascist terror" and calling on her to take the lead in the fight against extremism and xenophobia. They called on her to refrain from underestimating the severity of the problem; to swiftly move ahead with a city program to combat xenophobia, which has been under discussion since 2004; and to present to the public her strategy for combating racist violence.[43]  

Overall, the message coming from Russia's civil society leaders is that the official reaction to hate-motivated crimes and what these crimes reveal about the plight of Russia's minorities has been both intermittent and largely muted, falling far short of the visible, concrete concerted action to combat racist violence and related hate crimes that is required.