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Monitoring and Support for Victims of Racist Violence

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Monitoring and Support for Victims of Racist Violence HATE CRIME IN RUSSIA HATE3.2: CRIME IN RUSSIA Monitoring and Support for Victims of Racist Violence 1 ARIBA e.V./ReachOut – Counselling for Victims and Education about Right-wing Extremism, Racism and Anti-Semitism, Berlin HATE CRIME IN RUSSIA Monitoring and Support for Victims of Racist Violence Authors: Tatiana Golova · Robert Kusche · Ute Weinmann With the assistance of: Anzhelika Avdeeva · Sebastian Friedrich · Sabine Seyb Berlin, October 2010 ARIBA e.V./ReachOut – Counselling for Victims and Education about Right-wing Extremism, Racism and Anti-Semitism Hate CRIME IN RUSSIA TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword 6 Preface 8 Introduction and Approach 10 Debate over the Concept of “Hate Crime” 12 Critical Discussion of the Public Discourse Concerning “Hate Crimes” 15 The Negative Images of Migrants 15 The Representation of Victims of Right-Wing, Racist Violence in the Media 16 Discussions about “Tolerance Programmes” 18 Discussion on the Anti-Extremism Legislation 20 Conclusion 20 Legal Norms and Practice 22 The Russian Legislation on Bias-Motivated Crimes 22 The Use of Legislation in Practice 24 Legal Procedures in Criminal Cases 26 Conclusion 28 Problems of Monitoring and Victim Statistics 30 Regional Analyses 34 Moscow and the Larger Moscow Region 34 Number of Victims and Their Situation 34 Regional Cooperation Partners 36 St. Petersburg 38 Numbers of Victims and Their Situation 38 Regional Cooperation Partners 42 Voronezh 43 Numbers of Victims and Their Situation 43 Regional Cooperation Partners 45 Stavropol 46 Numbers of Victims and Their Situation 46 Regional Cooperation Partners 48 Petrozavodsk 49 Numbers of Victims and Their Situation 49 Regional Cooperation Partners 50 Murmansk 50 Number of Victims and Their Situation 50 Regional Cooperation Partners 52 The Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Area 52 Number of Victims and Their Situation 52 Regional Cooperation Partners 53 Conclusion and Recommendations for Further Action 54 Conclusion: Monitoring 54 Conclusion: Counselling and Support for Victims of Right-Wing and Racist Violence 55 Recommendations for Action: Monitoring 55 Recommendations for Action: Counselling and Support for Victims of Right-Wing and Racist Violence 56 Recommendations for Potential Donors: 56 Acknowledgements 57 References 58 Books / Journals 58 Internet Resources 59 List of Interviews According to Region 64 3 Appendix 66 Concept and Methodology (Reachout) 70 Authors 78 Organisations 80 Copyright 82 Hate CRIME IN RUSSIA FOREWORD The Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (Foundation EVZ) promotes contemporary civic engagement for people who experience violence (so-called bias or hate crimes) due to their ethnicity, skin colour, religion, their political work for human rights or their sexual orientation. The background for this commitment is constituted by the legal duty to grant victims who experienced the National Socialist racist-motivated injustices during the Second World War moral, financial and legal recognition of their suffered injustices, which have long been withheld by Germany. With the second, future-oriented duty, the Foundation attempts to ensure that contemporary victims of racist violence receive this social recognition and support in society in a timely manner and that general conditions are created that make this kind of violence impossible. Due to the fact that there is hardly any available infrastructure for the support of victims of bias-motivated crimes in Central and Eastern European countries, the Foundation EVZ sup- ports exemplary projects in Poland, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine and Russia that provide support for these victims. Through the support of organisations which work closely with the victims, they are encouraged to agitate for their rights and to demand social change in terms of how bias-motivated crimes are dealt with. The Foundation wants to contribute to strengthen- ing social awareness and solidarity for the interests of these victims groups, to the improvement of their legal status and to the establishment of counselling structures. The projects should make a long-term contribution to the decrease of the number of these crimes by increasing awareness in the social realm and by ostracising the perpetrators, and by protecting human rights for minorities who are exposed to dangerous conditions. It is precisely for this reason that the focus of the project support is the professionalisation of the support services as well as the collection and documentation of data on bias-motivated crimes (monitoring), supported by lobby and outreach work. Another goal is the formation of a national and international network of actors. Experience in monitoring and counselling victims of right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic violence and threats from past years in Germany should be made accessible to corresponding initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe. In order to be able to identify suitable organisations in the countries where the projects are carried out, the Foundation EVZ supported research in Poland, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine and Russia. The authors of the project ReachOut—Victim Counselling and Education against Right-Wing Extremism, Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Berlin association Ariba e.V. have with great dedication surveyed the relevant initiatives and organisations working with victims in the Russian metropoles of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the cities of Stavropol and Voronezh in southern Russia, in Yekaterinburg in the Urals and Murmansk and Petrosavodsk in northern Russia, determining what kinds of support they are able to provide to victims of racist violence. The authors shared the results of this country research with the surveyed organ- isations in July 2010 in Moscow. 4 Hate CRIME IN RUSSIA In the report presented here, the authors investigate the legal norms and practices of the Russian legislation on hate crimes based on a critical examination of the concept “hate crime.” They analyze the numbers of victims and the situations of those exposed to violence and sum- marize the problems of monitoring and the victim statistics in the surveyed regions. They show that primarily people of Central Asian and Caucasian origin that live in Russia as migrant workers are exposed not infrequently to complex forms of social discrimination, harassment and abuse by the police as well as racist attacks due to their “non-Slavic appearance.” Other people become victims due to their sexual orientation or belonging to a subculture. The au- thors underline that those affected often do not file charges or go to independent monitoring centres due to fear of the authorities. In particular, bodily injury hardly appears in the statistics at all because the authorities neither accept the racist motives of violent crimes nor investigate them. The recommendations for further action by the authors and the description of the work- ing methodology of the ReachOut Project are of particular value for the Foundation EVZ, the other foundations and organisations that are active in Russia, and for the civil society actors themselves. A few of the recommendations will be implemented over the next several years by our foundation by specifically supporting appropriate projects which seek to improve monitor- ing and offer counselling services for the various victim groups in Russia. I am happy that we are able to publish the study in German and also in English as desired by the surveyed NGOs, and would like to thank the authors Tatiana Golova, Robert Kusche and Ute Weinmann as well as Anzhelika Avdeeva, Sebastian Friedrich, Sabine Seyb and Sanchita Basu for the successful realisation of this project. Above all, I would like to thank the civil society actors in Russia who participated in the project. I hope all readers of this study will attain new insights into the situation of people who do not have a sufficiently strong lobby in Russia and who need support. There is a dire need for more significant national and international efforts to ensure that the victims are not left alone and (that they) obtain the necessary legal and personal recognition, and to judge the perpetra- tors and discourage these crimes from being committed in the social realm. former Minister Alexandr Petrovich Pochinok Federation Council of Russia Curator of the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” 5 Hate CRIME IN RUSSIA PREFACE Since mid-2001 ReachOut has been active in counselling and supporting victims and wit- nesses of right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic assaults and threats in Berlin. ReachOut also re- searches, documents and publishes information about the assaults in order to reflect the extent of these violent crimes more realistically than the official statistics of the investigative author- ities are capable of doing. The unreported number of assaults on people who do not fit in with the world view of the perpetrators remains high. There are, however, a large number of independent initiatives, counselling projects and documentation centres that focus on documenting the extent of the violence and the situation of the victims, independent of whether the victims are in the position to press charges or not. With the help of state support, counselling centres for victims of right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic violence were founded in 2001 in Berlin and the eastern German federal states. Despite unclear and precarious conditions, the projects were able to establish themselves and the staff members have become recognised as experts by representatives of the media, social scientists and policy makers. Contributing to this was the concrete counselling and above all the professional research and documentation work. This is why the number of assaults that the victim counselling projects publish is much higher than the numbers from the investigative authorities. On the international level, very little is known about the right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic violence in Eastern Europe. As a result, the knowledge about the situation of victims and their family members is very limited even among experts. From its research and counselling praxis in Berlin, ReachOut knows that the largest group to use its counselling services is comprised of those who are assaulted due to racist motives.
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