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Human rights activists warn of xenophobia surge
Published: 18 January, 2010, 20:15
Edited: 20 January, 2010, 08:18
TAGS: Crime, Russia, Hate crimes, Human rights, Prime Time Russia
During the first two weeks of 2010 there have been five hate attacks, resulting in three deaths, human rights activists stated.
This year the number of crimes driven by xenophobia will increase compared to 2009, the director of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Aleksandr Brod, told Interfax news agency.
He said the increase will be caused by the recession, active campaigning of right-wing organizations and the government’s lack of a nation-wide program to defuse nationalistic notions and tensions.
Brod also presented the bureau’s statistics on xenophobic crimes in previous years based on monitoring data. According to Brod, 215 hate crimes were committed in Russia last year, killing 74 and leaving at least 282 injured. The number of victims was lower than figures of 2008, when at least 120 people died and no less than 268 were injured in xenophobic assaults.
“The vast majority of attackers are youths,” says Reverend Robert K. Bronkema, who serves the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy and is Head of the Task Force on Racial Violence and Harassment. “Once there is nothing to latch on to, the easiest thing to do is to latch on to extreme nationalism, which manifests itself by attacking those who are different”.
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2 comments
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Schools are the best places to start with education. Lessons of tolerance and caring for all individuals are best thought at a young age. This helps especially in environments where children are likely to be exposed to xenophobia in their own environments. Workplaces are another best places for education. Particularly all public service employees and anyone employed or paid through state funds. Even private sector could be mandated to provide training, if they receive any incentives or other public funds. People are more attentive when their jobs are at stake. Sports are essential to breaking down the walls and countering xenophobia. Military is also one of the best ways of modelling good citizenship and mutual respect among service members. Military should take pride in advancing their cosmopolitan attitudes. Young people should be given opporunities to get excited about something positive. Otherwise, they will fall pray to preachers of doom --- to whom there is always somebody else responsible for their failure. Immigration is an interesting problem. On one hand, if Russia does not increase immigration, it will not be able to economically develop its vast space.
Tolerance is good and it is civilised but it is not good to dilute the culture of a country with too many immigrants of a very different kind. Britain is no longer English or Scottish or Welsh. It is sad to see what was good about the countryside and the people so insecure in their own land. I hope that does not happen to Russia. And, I wish that the culture of teh other people of the World such as the Africans had not been destroyed by the white people of the World because there is enormous suffering now, for people who know longer know who they are, living in limbo without the structure of their own cultures to keep them secure and sane.