2/9/2006- Right-wing nationalists and residents in a northern Russian town clashed with riot police and destroyed a restaurant, rights activists and witnesses said Saturday, days after a fight between ethnic Russians and ethnic Chechens left several people dead, The Associated Press reports. Police in the town of Kondopoga, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles), north of Moscow, denied any serious disturbances took place. Police in the Karelia region, where Kondopoga is located, said there had been "small hooliganism" in the town. But Alexander Verkhovsky, head of the Moscow-based human rights center Sova, told The Associated Press that right-wing nationalists were traveling to the remote town amid calls from anti-immigrants groups to attack Chechens and other people from Russia's southern Caucasus regions. Verkhovsky said a group of Russian and Chechen men clashed earlier this week at a Chechen-owned restaurant named "Chaika," resulting in the deaths of at least two Russian men. A clerk at a store in Kondopoga who refused to give her name told AP by telephone that the clash occurred Wednesday and that "several" people were killed. Verkhovsky said dozens - possibly hundreds - of people and right-wing nationalists descended on Kondopoga over the course of the week and late Friday, groups attacked the restaurant with metal bars and Molotov cocktails and fought with riot police.
Alexander Belov, a leader with the group "Russian Movement Against Illegal Immigration," told AP that people attacked the restaurant after the burial of two of the Russians killed earlier in the week. One right-wing Web site reported that the mob tried also to attack a local goods bazaar run mainly by Chechens and others. Vekhorovsky and Belov both said young men were currently running through town yelling racist slogans, apartments and businesses owned by Chechens and other people from the Caucasus and burning them down. Belov claimed that many Kondopoga residents considered the Chechens to be criminals and that the fight earlier this week at the restaurant was "the straw that broke the camel's back." "Tonight, it's very possible that we could see a repeat of what happened last night," he told AP. The store clerk said many residents were afraid to go out on the streets. Ekho Moskvy radio reported hundreds of residents called by the city officials Saturday afternoon and photographs posted on the Web site indicated hundreds of people had gathered in the town center. The store clerk said residents were pelting the building with eggs and other debris. Another Web site belonging to an anti-immigrant organization said Kondopoga's mayor and town council had signed a declaration calling for all illegal immigrants to be expelled from the city. Russia has seen a marked rise in xenophobia and racism in recent years, with a series of attacks on dark-skinned migrants, foreigners and Jews. Rights groups say authorities do little or nothing to combat the crimes.
© MosNews http://www.mosnews.com/ ***************************** 110 DETAINED, 3 CHARGED WITH MURDER AFTER MOB VIOLENCE IN RUSSIA After days of violence between Russians and Chechens in a northern Russian town over a hundred people have been arrested and three charged with murder, a regional prosecutor's official said Monday.
04/09/2006 - Regional and local officials maintained that the situation in the town of Kondopoga, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) north of Moscow, was calm Monday. But Russian news reports said the town was tense and many residents were staying off the streets, AP reports. Mobs of residents and right-wing nationalists rampaged through Kondopoga on Friday, setting fires, smashing windows and throwing stones. More violence broke out again Saturday after thousands of people rallied to demand that police expel Chechens and other ethnic minorities from Russia's North Caucasus region, or investigate them for criminal ties. The persistent violence and calls for the expulsion of people from the Caucasus came after a group of Russian and Chechen men clashed at a restaurant on Wednesday, resulting in the deaths of at least two Russian men. Pavel Ponomaryev, an official from the Karelian regional prosecutor's office, told The Associated Press that 109 people had been detained, and 25 faced misdemeanor charges for various acts. Three people have charged with murder in connection with the fight, he said. ITAR-Tass on Sunday quoted Karelia's interior minister, Maj. Gen. Dmitry Mikhailov, as saying that Saturday night's rioters - mostly young men and teenage boys, many of them drunk - set a car on fire and attacked the restaurant, throwing stones and trying to take alcohol and cigarettes from a storeroom. Meanwhile, Chechnya's prime minister blamed Kondopoga authorities for allowing the situation to get out of hand.
"The brawl has evolved into an ethnically motivated conflict with a clearly anti-Chechen and anti-Caucasus bias," Ramzan Kadyrov said in a blunt statement posted on the Web site Chechen.ru. "The unrest is continuing against a backdrop of massive abuses of constitutional rights and looting of retail outlets." "If the Kondopoga police had been more efficient in curtailing serious crimes, including massive fights, the current crisis would not have erupted, while the nationalists would not have scored new points in their campaign," he was quoted as saying. Russia has seen a marked rise in xenophobia and racism in recent years, with a series of attacks on foreigners, Jews and dark-skinned migrants from the impoverished Caucasus region and ex-Soviet Central Asia. Rights groups say authorities do little or nothing to combat hate crimes, often choosing to prosecute flagrant hate crimes against minorities as simple hooliganism. Following terrorist attacks by militants linked to separatist rebels in Chechnya, Chechens and members of other ethnic groups from the North Caucasus have become particularly vulnerable to persecution and hate crimes.
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