Racist attacks up

last updated 8 January 2015

St. Petersburg, Russia

Russian neo-Nazis have stepped up racist assaults in recent weeks, as the nation’s skinheads geared up to mark Adolf Hitler’s birthday, on April 20. Sova, a Russian group that monitors racism, said such attacks have been rising steadily all year. Last week, someone machine-gunned a group of African students, killing one, as they were leaving a disco. The next day, neo-Nazi skinheads threw two Tajik men from a train, killing one of them. Racism is widespread in Russia, where surveys have found that more than half of Russians admit they strongly dislike other ethnic groups. It’s also tough to win convictions for hate crimes. Eight men who stabbed a 9-year-old Tajik girl to death in 2004 were convicted not of murder but of hooliganism, and given sentences of less than five years.