Minorities Under Siege:
The Case of St. Petersburg
Recommendations
In order to address the problem of racist violence in Russia and in St. Petersburg
in particular, Human Rights First urges the Russian authorities to undertake
the following actions:
- State categorically that the current level of racist violence in St. Petersburg
and in Russia as a whole is unacceptable and must be addressed unequivocally.
- React immediately in public statements to crimes of racist violence and other
violent bias crimes, affirming that such acts will not be tolerated and following
up to ensure that appropriate action is taken by law enforcement officials and
prosecutors to take into account bias motivations in the investigation and prosecution
of the crimes.
- Send a clear instruction to all public prosecutors to make racist and related
violence a high priority, and to apply laws that provide for enhanced penalties
for such offences.
- Establish a system for the monitoring and collection of statistics on hate
crimes and their prosecution and for the regular publication of this data. Statistics
should provide data disaggregated to distinguish the target groups affected.
- Provide a mandate and appropriate resources to an official anti-discrimination
body in line with Council of Europe recommendations (European Commission against
Racism and Intolerance General Policy Recommendations No. 2 and No. 7). This
body should provide oversight over the monitoring and reporting of hate crimes
in combating this violence through the criminal justice system. Such a body must
be mandated to work closely with the Ministry of the Interior and the General
Prosecutors Office and other bodies concerned with the registration, investigation,
and prosecution of hate crimes, but which currently do not regularly or systematically
publish statistics on such crimes.
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