Tajiks get attacked by Neo Nazis in Russia
Here is a piece of news that surfaced recently on Russian media regarding a problem that almost all Tajiks living in Russia face.
The strange thing is that neither Tajik nor Russian governments have paid enough attention to these blatant racial attacks. Perhaps the best example of such negligence is demonstrated by Russian court decision that sentenced the murderers of the 11-year-old Tajik girl to only 5 years of prison.
Neo Nazi groups sprung up in Russia after the fall of Soviet Union. This comes as a serious surprise for a nation that fought Nazi Germany as recently as 65 years ago. Yet, my feeling is that generally such groups appeal to general public and find support in it (that is based on several shows I watched on NTV about skinheads and generally how “willing” is the general public to help the victims of such attacks after they have been beaten to near-death) because they promote an alternative (and somewhat SICK) notion of “Russian Identity”, that strokes Russian egos.
No stats are available on the extent of such attacks, but my guess is that they are quite high. In one of the flights I took back home from Moscow, I came accross a crippled guy in his 20s. When I asked what happened, his relatives who came to Moscow to get him told me that he got attached by skinheads. He spent a month in a hospital and no one knew of his existence until he came back from coma and told about what happened. I have been told that in almost all Moscow-Dushanbe flights there is at least one person who is going home crippled.
on April 13th, 2006 at 7:45 am
That is really worrisome, and it is not only tajiks who get attacked by skinheads. My Armenian friend in Moscow told me stories about skinheads I find hard to believe. Many times she has to bite her tongue and hide her nationality. Another Armenian I know got attacked in Saint-Petersburg by skinheads, and spent a day or two in the hospital. In the airport, in Yerevan (capital city of Armenia) coffins coming from Moscow are a usual sight (as usual as it can be).
on April 13th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
According to Asia Plus yesterday, 113 labour migrants have been returned dead to Tajikistan this far this year. The police says that 16 of them were killed (they probably mean murdered). This is really scary.
on April 13th, 2006 at 2:21 pm
Someone close Russian government told me that these groups were a brainchild of some political leader who had a role in Kremlin in Yeltsin era. I was told they were created and supported by Kremlin… that is until they got ugly.
Xenophobia is widespread and not only limited to Central Asians. Back in late 90s I think skinheads stormed a local Irish pub near Red Square, armed with metal bars and chains. It was not pretty.
on April 13th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
I can only hope that this hatred and failure of the justice system are temporary. I can’t help but think of the way blacks were treated in American just a few years ago. The system still has many holes, but it is slowly getting better, I think. I hope that laws will get better in Russia and that more attention is paid to the infuriating things such as a sentence of 5 years for a murder. What the hell? How can the jurors or the judge live with themselves with that sentence?
Again, I just hope this gets better, but when I was in Moscow in 1994 I witnessed sailors going through the train, car by car beating up all who had an olive skin and dark hair. They spared me and my brother, probably because we were ‘kids.’ It has been over 11 years and we are still dealing with this issue, and it seems to get worse every year.
on April 14th, 2006 at 1:34 am
Tajiks are not really treated as blacks in the US back in 60s. It is bad, but not that bad. What happens in Russia now is not a result of laws that deny Tajiks a right to be protected, but the absence of legal base to provide them with such basic security.
Tajiks can stand for themselves though. In one of these “paratroopers’ days” drunk paratroopers tried to assault a group or ordinary Tajiks and got themselves in trouble. So much for Russian elite training system.
It is quite amazing that some Russians revere an ideology that thought of them as second-grade human beings.
on April 14th, 2006 at 5:26 am
I lived in Russia for a relatively short period of time, and even I had to witness some skinhead violence on Hitler’s birthday. Some juveniles punched someone with dark skin and then immdediatley took off before the cops could catch them.
The neo-nazi problem in Russia always seemed unimaginable to me; after upwards of 30 million deaths by some estimates in WW2, it always seemed to me that Russia is the absolute last place one would find naziism.
on April 14th, 2006 at 7:52 am
What a situation for poor people of Tajikistan. They get mistreated at home. They go to Russia, get mistreated all the same. When is this injustice going to stop?
on April 14th, 2006 at 11:30 am
I agree with Murodjan reg. the pointless comparison with the blacks in the Southern US. Rather, it reminds the waves of racist attacks against migrants from Morocco, Pakistan and sub-Saharan Africa in much of the EU in the ’80s and early ’90s (and up to this day in eg. certain depressed the ex-GDR/Eastern Germany).
It seems to me, at least in certain parts of the EU, that raw/primitive racism and -attacks decreased (at least compared to the late ’80s/early ’90s) as far-right groups get access to the salons, appear in sharp suits, and managed to get into parliament and municipality councils.
Apart form that, the phenomenon in Russia not new. There now seems to be a wave of violence againt Tajik ‘mardikori’, before (and probably still now) many ’southern looking’ people were harrassed on the suspicion of being Chechen which (for many Russians, automatically means ‘mafia’ and ‘Wahhabi terrorist’).
The most interesting question is, whether these neo-Nazi groups are a noisy fringe phenomenon that is blown out of proportion by the media attention they get; or indeed a) an indicator of widespread feelings in Russian society and b) pawns/useful idiots/a sort of death squads for ’something/someone bigger’.
“these groups were a brainchild of some political leader who had a role in Kremlin in Yeltsin era.”
Who could that be? Zhirinovski and Limonov had no position in the Kremlin as far as I know and are more folklore. Pashka Mercedes maybe (cf. his dubious role during the wars in Tajikistan and the first Chechen war)?
“Xenophobia is widespread and not only limited to Central Asians. Back in late 90s I think skinheads stormed a local Irish pub”
IMO, antipathy against Westerners (and, sui generis, places that where they tend to gather/that are associated with them) is clearly on the increase in large parts of the ex-USSR not only Russia, also Kazakhstan and even Kyrgyzstan. But I think that is for different reasons, and understandable ones at that. The sleazy, pedantic and humiliating behavior of a certain part of the expats has done a lot to foster popular antipathy.
on April 14th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
“Who could that be? Zhirinovski and Limonov had no position in the Kremlin as far as I know and are more folklore. Pashka Mercedes maybe (cf. his dubious role during the wars in Tajikistan and the first Chechen war)?” The man did not tell me who it could be.
“a) an indicator of widespread feelings in Russian society and b) pawns/useful idiots/a sort of death squads for ’something/someone bigger’.”
I think they are mainly a tool for settling commercial interest disputes between Russians and other ethnic groups that now control various commercial structures/points in Moscow.Whoever came up with this idea of getting rid of rivals must have had a really good strategy: use these young idiots as a tool to expand your commercial empire, while giving them some kind of ideology that appeals to general public.
This way there is no reason to come up with laws that limit the rights of certain ethnic groups, i.e. there is no risk of condemnation/sanctions from the west, while it still guarrantees pretty much an upper hand to certain Russian groups to dominate the commercial sector.
The idea used by these Neo Nazi groups is that pure Russians should be given a special dominant status in the society (by law that is). The claim is as ridiculous as it gets since no one now can claim in Russia that he/she is 100% Russian (that is after 200 years of Tatar-Mongol regime). Pretty much everyone I talked to has some lineage that is clearly non-slavic.
Yet, in shows where skinheads figure as people who defend national identity, they get 80% of support through anonymous votes. Isn’t that odd?
In one of my social experiments where I sat with my Russian friends (around 15 people) I asked them to tell me honestly if they had any other nationalities in their blood. All of them apart from one had either Tatars, Kalmyks, Kazakhs, Jews, etc. except for one (who we jokingly called a minority)…
on April 16th, 2006 at 8:34 am
Tajikboy: “I think they are mainly a tool for settling commercial interest disputes between Russians and other ethnic groups that now control various commercial structures/points in Moscow.”
Well possible. In other parts of the world, there were pogroms that clearly had a ‘wealth redistribution angle’ eg. against Lebanese in several West African countries in the early ’90s, the Gujarati in Uganda in the ’70s, ethnic Chinese in Indonesia; a similar logic was at work (be it not a ‘pogrom’ of course) when Kazakh and Kyrgyz authorities and mobsters harrassed ethnic Uighurs a couple years ago, officially because of ’suspected terrorist links’ but in fact because Uighurs are strong in trade, currency exchange, …
Manucher: “They get mistreated at home. They go to Russia, get mistreated all the same. When is this injustice going to stop?”
I think that incidents like these ones shed the light on a certain reality.
Even if Tajikistan and other southern ex-Soviet countries will always have a special relationship with Russia because of the common Soviet past, the continuing domination of the Russian language, media, migrant labor etc., Russia (as a power establishment that is — nothing against ‘the Russians’) is *not* the ‘big brother’ that will ’save’, ‘help’ and ‘protect’ you, like not a few in the region seem to think/hope.
Today, Russia is a neo-colonial power in a part of the world (southern ex-USSR) that is clearly characterised by a post-colonial situation. And like all neo-colonial powers, it is trying to safeguard its interest and position (control over raw materials, markets, cheap labour, … ) by *using* you, by supporting vicious compradore regimes, etc.
So do the West (US+EU) and China. Neither Russia, the West or China will be your saviors.
on April 16th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Ataman, what I am lamenting is not the mistreatment that Tajiks get outside, in that regard Tajiks are in the same boat with other “small brothers”. What I am lamenting is how the state of affairs is at home with rank and file of the citizens not knowing their basic rights and as a result of that, not knowing how to assert themselves vis-a-vis the authorities. This is what is missing in the post-conflict Tajik society, but hopefuly changing nowaday. I believe in the change coming from inside and not from “the big brothers” like Russia, not from the newfound brothers like Turkey or Iran and definitely not from “the philanthropic West”.
“The sleazy, pedantic and humiliating behavior of a certain part of the expats has done a lot to foster popular antipathy”. Ataman, I agree with you. Certain expats behave such that it tells one as if they own you. And let me tell you guys how frastrating it feels, when certain people that come from the lands of freedom and human rights, deny these same things when they come to Tajikistan.
on April 16th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Correction: “deny these same things when they come to Tajikistan”, to be read as “deny these same RIGHTS TO LOCAL PEOPLE”
on April 17th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
I don’t believe that comments should be viewed as pointless. It was not a comparison by any means. I was simply saying that things do change over time. Right now Russians are going through that time when they are getting used to the changes, changes like having other people, non-russians, on their territory. This has happened to many ethnic groups over time, the irish in the early times of Civil War in the US, the blacks, the spanish…it’s all just part of change. The same I believe is what’s happening in Russian in regards to tajiks or caucaus people…that was what I was trying to say. Sheesh.
on September 4th, 2006 at 5:40 am
i don’t think the neo nazis in Russia should attack people from India , because Indians and Russians are both Aryans !!!!
on April 25th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
Its so said, that i am speechless…
Every emotion, political movement, mass phenomenon can always be the reason of provocation of other emotions, other political movements and other mass phenomena; it was facism which introduced the human conscience to socialism and communism, and now years of communism in russia and of FORCED equality which has caused the tension in the brain of russians their preference for their white skin and their light eyes. This is the product of extremes. The product of the imposement of equality for everyone and not of will. Im so unhappy to hear that so many of my fellow “hamvatans” are being killed for the simple reason of wanting to feed their families. All i want is to have educated people all around the world who care for all these people who suffer and to think about them and use the privileges of being in a foreign country and to educate themselves as much as possible so that tomorrow, we may have some people to come back to our country and to make some changes, not just any changes, real, positive, strong changes.
Im happy to see some active people, who promote the exchange of information such that our brains might know more about whats really going on.