NO-NONSENSE MURDER
By Dmitry Babich
Russia Profile
September 23, 2008
Russia
As Skinheads Organize Into "Communities," Racially-Motivated Killings
Become Routine
In the last few years, Russia has come to house ever more immigrants
from Central Asia and the Caucasus. But as the number of migrants
grows, so does the number of fascists, the latter becoming more
aggressive and impudent. It took the death of a famous chess player
at the hands of the racists for the authorities to take note, but
they now seem to be retaliating with tougher prison sentences even
for underage criminals.
The sentencing in Moscow of 13 underage skinheads, found guilty of two
murders and more than ten racist attacks, indicates a new, tougher
line on racist violence that the authorities and the courts seem to
have adopted. The prosecutor demanded up to 22-year-long prison terms
for the young racists, but the court felt restricted by the fact that
only one of the accused, Ivan Kalinichenko, was older than 18 when the
attacks took place. He was sentenced to ten years in a penal colony
and could barely hide his joy, having expected tougher punishment. Ten
years is the maximum an underage criminal can get in Russia.
The other criminals, all of them underage at the time of the murders,
committed less than a year ago, received milder sentences, with one
boy (15-year-old Linar Kosyak) getting just three years.
"I noticed that in the last few years, the courts started handing
out tougher sentences," said Semyon Charny, the author of a recently
published book "Xenophobia and Intolerance in Russia." "This started
with a trial in Voronezh several years ago. Maybe, the courts and
the authorities started to realize the danger that racism poses to
Russia. Pressure from the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation and
some mass media, horrified by the recent surge in racially-motivated
violence, also played a role."
In the first six months of 2008, 80 people were killed in 171
racially-motivated attacks in Russia, a country of 144 million
people. Racist violence has been growing exponentially in the last
four to five years, when Russia experienced several waves of migration
from Central Asia and the Caucuses, becoming second only to the United
States in terms of the number of migrants residing on its territory.
Kalinichenko’s group of young racists has been conducting attacks
on a routine basis for several months. The group caught the eye of
the police after its members went on a beating spree on the night of
October 20, 2007. On that fateful night, the gang’s members met after
contacting each other via the Internet. Having seen an Asian-looking
man on the street, they pushed him to the ground and beat him to
death with baseball bats. The man happened to be Sergei Nikolayev, a
famous chess player from Russia’s Siberian region of Yakutia. Having
finished him off, the killers attacked an Uzbek street cleaner, and
later a 24-year-old Armenian, who bled to death before the paramedics
arrived. Since Nikolayev was a well-known man in his region, and the
"fashion" of the killings left no doubt about the racial motives,
the police began investigating the murders. One of the killers,
Stanislav Gribach, hurt himself with his knife during the attack and
asked for medical help. Doctors reported him to the police, and the
murderer was identified by blood stains on his clothes.
Journalists present at the sentencing were surprised by the aggressive
behavior of the defendants and their parents. Instead of repenting,
one of the convicted criminals raised his arm in a Nazi salute, and the
parents cursed at the journalists, suggesting to "settle the scores"
outside the courtroom.
The case of Kalinichenko’s group is just the first in what appears to
be a series of "skinhead trials." In July, around the same time as
Kalinichenko’s, the case of another group headed by an 18-year-old
skinhead, Artur Ryno, was passed from prosecutors to the Moscow
city court.
Ryno, a former student of icon painting, is accused of 21 murders
and confessed to having committed them all alone. Sergei Belikov,
an activist of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights and the author of a
book on racist movements among Russia’s youth titled "Nazi Fighters,"
suspects that Ryno is deliberately exaggerating the number of "his"
murders.
"During the last few years, die-hard skinhead racists developed
a perverted sense of group solidarity, which sometimes borders on
self-sacrifice," Belikov said. "Knowing that he will be jailed for life
anyway, Ryno may be deliberately taking these murders upon himself in
order to shield some members of his group from punishment. For police,
this is a good excuse to terminate an investigation: since the killer
confessed, there will be fewer questions asked."
In Belikov’s opinion, skinhead groups in Russia, once loose gangs of
rowdy uneducated youths, crystallized in the last few years, becoming
more aggressive, disciplined and devoted. "Before, many skinheads just
played a sort of a nasty game, where Nazi paraphernalia and racist
language were considered signs of ‘coolness’," Belikov said. "Now
it is much more difficult to enter the group and to gain its members
trust. Now they are involved in a serious business – murder."