Minorities Under Siege: Hate Crimes and Intolerance in the Russian Federation

III. Transparent Systems of Monitoring and
Statistical Reporting

Official Monitoring and Statistical Reporting

The Russian Ministry of the Interior publishes yearly figures on crimes in the Russian Federation, although there is no separate reporting on crimes carried out with a bias or hate motivation or disaggregated data on particular crimes in order to distinguish victims from different population groups. The Ministry of the Interior's annual report for 2005 does include a category on crimes "of an extremist nature," and reports 152 such crimes, although it does not specify its criteria for this or the specific crimes categorized under that general heading. [25]

The Ministry of the Interior also reports on crimes committed against "foreign citizens and persons without citizenship." In 2005, there were 13,307 such crimes, a 29 percent increase over 2004.[26] This figure covers all crimes against this sector of the population, not only hate crimes, although the victims of hate crimes often come from among this category of persons. In October 2002, the Prosecutor General told the Russian State Duma that "every year in Russia about 7,000 crimes are committed against foreigners," but also noted that "not every crime against a foreigner should be considered bias-motivated."[27] Crimes or incidents affecting distinct minorities, both nationals and non-citizens, are not differentiated in the official statistics currently available.

Russia has provided some crime statistics in its reporting to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).[28] Russia was most recently on the agenda of CERD in 2003 in the regular sequence of reporting required under the treaty, and is expected to report again later this year.

The Presidential Council on Developing Civil Society Institutions and Human Rights has also reported, albeit infrequently and irregularly, on cases of hate crimes in which charges have been brought. The head of the Presidential Council, Ella Pamfilova, has spoken forcefully about the need for an improved response to the challenge of racist violence and related intolerance, including a review of attitudes in government agencies. In a televised interview in October 2005, Pamfilova supported improved legislation, but said that "most important is to change the attitude on the part of law enforcement agencies." The Prosecutor General's Office, she added, "should step up its work and give a principled assessment of the actions of their colleagues in police and other law enforcement agencies."[29]

In April 2004, the then-Presidential Council on Human Rights, at that time also under Pamfilova's leadership, expressed concern over racist violence and discrimination and made a series of concrete proposals for change. The Commission had noted some progress toward prosecutions of hate crimes, but urged legislative and policy initiatives including:

• New legislation in the State Duma to facilitate prosecution of crimes committed on racist grounds;
• Requirements that all racist crimes be carefully investigated;
• Publicity concerning the investigation of racist crimes in the mass media;
• Harsh measures against political leaders and officials at every level "who make statements that incite ethnic and religious intolerance;"
• The creation of "public advisory councils under the Ministry of the Interior departments at all levels to draft an integrated position of the police and society with regard to public demonstrations of racism;"
• Enforcement of requirements that local prosecutors' offices carry out the instructions of the Prosecutor General to establish contacts with local human rights organizations (requirements "which have been virtually ignored to date"); and
• The development and implementation of educational programs to enhance tolerance.

But there has been little apparent progress toward the adoption of these measures. The continued absence of detailed and systematic monitoring and statistical reporting on hate crimes, including data distinguishing the groups targeted for violence, echoes the lack of a concerted political response to these crimes. It denies the public and policy makers needed information and hinders a better understanding of the weaknesses of the criminal justice system in the prosecution of hate crimes.

In March 2005, at a meeting with one of Russia's two chief rabbis, Berl Lazar, President Vladimir Putin declared his resolve to fight antisemitism, and appeared to acknowledge the importance of monitoring and reporting in the fight against all forms of discriminatory violence. According to the semi-official news agency Itar-Tass, President Putin affirmed that the government "will always keep track of the fight against antisemitism and the manifestations of other extreme trends – extremism and xenophobia – including the manifestation of chauvinism and anti-Russian sentiments.[30]

An effort by the Ministry of the Interior or other official bodies to collect and regularly publish statistics on hate crimes registered within the criminal justice system would constitute an important step forward. Such statistics would remain incomplete, however, as long as the violent bias incidents that could be prosecuted themselves remain underreported by victims and underregistered by the police.

Anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that victims of hate crimes from among vulnerable minorities are often reluctant to report an attack for fear that they may suffer further at the hands of law enforcement officials or out of a feeling that the attack will not be treated seriously or properly investigated. Victims who may lack residency permits – or identity papers as Russian citizens - may be especially reluctant to risk facing problems by taking their case to the police. There may also be reluctance on the part of law enforcement officials to register crimes reported to them or to record the elements of bias in complaints. The registration of crimes in which the victim believes there is a bias motivation – even those which don't lead to an investigation – is important for the sake of statistics collection which, if kept and reported properly, could serve to alert the authorities to worrying trends in the frequency of hate crimes.

The inadequacy of the police response to complaints of bias crimes is in part a consequence of a lack of appreciation among many law enforcement officials for the importance of treating hate crimes as particularly serious crimes. A further obstacle to the registration of complaints and effective investigation is often the bias on the part of law enforcement personnel themselves toward a particular minority group.

Police discrimination and violence against people from the Caucasus, Roma, and other minorities – which has been the subject of numerous human rights reports by local and international groups alike – is a backdrop to the racist violence perpetrated by ordinary Russian citizens. A recent study of the Open Society Institute and JURIX, Ethnic Profiling in the Moscow Metro, found that "persons of non-Slavic appearance made up only 4.6% of the riders of the Metro system, but 50.9% of persons stopped by the police at Metro exits. In other words, non-Slavs were, on average, 21.8 times more likely to be stopped than Slavs. At one station, non-Slavs were 85 times more likely than Slavs to be stopped by the police." The study concludes that "this disproportion is massive and cannot be explained on non-discriminatory, legitimate law enforcement grounds."[31]

Nongovernmental Monitoring and Statistical Reporting

The SOVA Informational and Analytical Center, a Moscow-based nongovernmental organization that monitors hate crimes in Russia, documented 31 racist murders and hate-based attacks on 413 individuals in 2005. This compares with 46 murders and 256 overall victims documented by the organization using the same criteria in 2004. In the first four months of 2006, the organization has documented 15 racist murders and hate-based attacks on 114 individuals.[32] The Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, which also monitors hate crimes, as part of an E.U.-funded anti-discrimination project, put the figure for hate-motivated murder at 25 for 2005, compared with 40 for 2004.[33]

Although there may have been a leveling off of the recorded numbers of violent hate crimes between 2004 and 2005, the overall trend has been a general increase in the incidence of such crimes. Because these figures come largely from a tabulation of press reports and analysis by local sources, the actual number of hate crimes is likely to be much higher. The SOVA Center has also monitored and reported on prosecutions in cases of violent crime. It found just four guilty verdicts reported with a bias motive in 2003, eight in 2004, and 16 in 2005. The 16 guilty verdicts in 2005 led to sentences of about 60 defendants.[34]