Criminal Activity of the Ultra-Right. Hate Crimes and Counteraction to Them in Russia in 2019
This report by SOVA Center[1] is focused on the phenomenon of hate crimes, i.e. on ordinary criminal offenses that were committed on the grounds of ethnic, religious or similar hostility or prejudice[2], and on the state’s counteraction to such crimes.
This is the third year that we have issued such report. Previously, sections on hate crimes were included in the single large annual report that encompassed both criminal and political activity of nationalists, as well as all measures to counteract them.
Summary
According to the monitoring data of SOVA Center, the number of racist and neo-Nazi-motivated attacks decreased in 2019, although the share of murders went up. The primary victim group is, as before, "ethnic outsiders", and the share of this group in the total number of victims has also increased.
Last year, there were two incidents of criminal nature that caused mass unrest under xenophobic slogans. The most notable of them were the anti-Roma acts in the Chemodanovka village of the Penza region. For the first time in many years, we learned about organized groups of ethnic minorities – the Yakut “Ooss Tumsuu” and the Azerbaijani VBON (“Vo Blago Obschego Naroda”, For the Good of the Common People).
The number of attacks on members of the LGBT community and on those deemed as such also increased in the past year, while the number of attacks on “ideological opponents”, including those who were viewed as “national-traitors”, significantly declined. The pro-Kremlin group SERB remains active, but its activity is tempered; in 2019, its members refrained from physical attacks almost entirely, limiting themselves to verbal assault.
Instances of damage to buildings, monuments, cemeteries, and various cultural sites, motivated by religious, ethnic, or ideological hatred are less frequent than before. However, as is the case with violence, the proportion of dangerous acts – explosions and arson – has increased in the past year. The number of desecrations of religious sites remained approximately the same. First and foremost, the number of attacks on ideological sites and objects has decreased.
As for the practice of law enforcement for hate crimes, the number of convictions in 2019 was down, which correlates with the decreasing rate of assaults. The quality of the efforts to combat hate crimes is debatable: on the one hand, members of well-known neo-Nazi groups such as Stolz Khabarovsk went behind bars last year. On the other hand, the proportion of suspended sentences for hate crimes started to grow again.
We are seeing a decrease in the criminal activity of the ultra-right, but we are also seeing a growing share of more dangerous violence. In addition, there is reason to believe that hate crimes have become even more latent. We cannot say that ideologically motivated violence is going away, so law enforcement agencies have plenty of work to do in this direction.
Attacks against the LGBT
The number of attacks against the LGBT community was higher than in the preceding year – one killed[19], seven injured and beaten (vs. one killed and five injured and beaten in 2018). There are no official statistics in Russia on victims of violence against the LGBT. As before, we have to emphasize that our data is minimal and the true level of homophobic violence is unknown. In 2019, the victims were comprised primarily of pickets or participants of other events associated with the LGBT; but there were also street attacks on individuals who were mistaken for the LGBT due to their appearance, as happened in Yekaterinburg when a group of aggressive young men attacked a man they suspected of being gay[20] and in St.-Petersburg when the girls mistaken for lesbians were beaten[21].
The murder of activist Elena Grigorieva in St. Petersburg on the night of July 19 was widely reported in the media. Grigorieva, who was openly bisexual, was an LGBT rights activist prominent in the St.-Petersburg LGBT movement. Her name was on the hit list published on the website of the homophobic group “Pila” (“Saw”)[22]. Grigorieva was also receiving threats from the well-known St.-Petersburg homophobic activist Timur Bulatov and some nationalists. She contacted the police more than once because of the threats but “there was no reaction whatsoever [on behalf of the law enforcement agencies]”. Yet, at the time of the report’s writing, the main version of the murder is drunken homicide. Police have detained a suspect, with whom, according to investigators, the activist had had a personal conflict that had led to her death[23].
In addition to physical assault, the LGBT activists regularly face threats from anti-gay individuals and right-wing radicals of all sorts. For example, threats from Bulatov have continued even after Grigorieva’s murder, with Karolina Kanaeva, an activist from Saransk, being one of the recipients[24]. On July 1, the above-mentioned “Pila” group published a hit list of the activists that it was threatening. On July 17, the LGBT Resource Center in Yekaterinburg received a letter signed by “Pila” demanding the Center’s shutdown by the end of July and the transfer of its funds to the charity “Podari Zhizn” [Gift of Life][25].
National Conservative Movement (NKD), led by Valentina Bobrova and Mikhail Ochkin, was very actively engaged in anti-gay acts throughout the past year. Together with Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, NKD opposed “the LGBT lobby and anti-Christian trends’ offensive against Russia” by holding various anti-gay actions and pickets. And on August 28 in Moscow, a play at Teatr.doc about the situation of homosexuals in Russia was disrupted by NKD, the pro-Kremlin SERB group, and the National Liberation Movement (NOD) activists[26].