Timur Kacharava | |
---|---|
Тимур Качарава თემურ კაჭარავა | |
![]() | |
Born | |
Died | November 13, 2005 20) | (aged
Cause of death | Murder |
Occupation(s) | musician, photographer, anti-fascist |
Timur Kacharava (Russian : Тиму́р Влади́мирович Качара́ва, Timur Vladimirovich Kacharava; Georgian :თემურ კაჭარავა, T’emur Kach’arava; 21 August 1985 – 13 November 2005) was a Russian university student, punk musician and anti-fascist activist of Georgian origin. He was murdered at the age of 20 by members of a far right nationalist group in St. Petersburg. [1]
Kacharava was born into the family of an army officer near Chernobyl. He studied at Saint Petersburg State University and was involved in a student anti-fascist and anarchist group that organized anti-fascist demonstrations and philanthropic actions. In 2003, he founded the hardcore punk band Sandinista!, for which he played guitar. In 2005, he also played for the crust punk band Distress, which toured Sweden.
On 13 November 2005, Kacharava was stabbed to death in St. Petersburg's Vosstaniya Square after sharing meals for Food Not Bombs, receiving five wounds in the neck. [2] A companion was also stabbed and seriously wounded. Observers believed that the attack may have been motivated by his activism in the anti-fascist movement. [3]
Over 3,000 St. Petersburg State University students petitioned the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, to find and punish the murderers. In December 2005, police arrested seven suspects who eventually admitted to the crime. On 7 August 2007, Alexander Shabalin was sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of a murder and incitement to ethnic or racial hatred. Six other members of the gang, who held Kacharava and prevented him from resisting, were charged with inciting social hatred, and were given suspended sentences. [4]
The main defendant in the trial was 14 years old. [5]
Russian human rights association Agora considered the trial as the most important achievement of human rights defenders in Russian courts in 2007. [6]
Kacharava's family, friends and colleagues remained convinced that Kacharava was the victim of an organized and well-armed neo-Nazi group. His friends testified that he had been followed, received threats by telephone, and been targeted before. According to Galina Stolyarova citing the victim family's lawyer in Transitions Online, the court accepted the scenario in which the murderer claimed he had spontaneously suggested beating up an anti-fascist activist, and did not charge the other assaulters as accomplices in the murder. [7] Kacharava's death led some of Russia's young anti-fascists to change tactics and use violence against neo-Nazis and racists. [4]
The National Bolshevik Party operated from 1993 to 2007 as a Russian political party with a political program of National Bolshevism. The NBP became a prominent member of The Other Russia coalition of opposition parties. Its members are known as Nazbols.
Galina Vasilyevna Starovoitova was a Soviet dissident, Russian politician and ethnographer known for her work to protect ethnic minorities and promote democratic reforms in Russia. She was shot to death in her apartment building in 1998.
Racism in Russia mainly appears in the form of negative attitudes towards non-ethnic Russian citizens, immigrants or tourists and negative actions against them by some Russians. Traditionally, Russian racism includes antisemitism and Tatarophobia, as well as hostility towards the various peoples of the Caucasus, Central Asia, East Asia and Africa.
Alexander Koptsev is a Russian-born terrorist. On January 11, 2006, Kopstev burst into Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue in Moscow, Russia during evening prayers and stabbed eight people with a hunting knife before being wrestled to the ground by the congregation's leader, Rabbi Yitzhak Kogan, and his son Yosef Kogan. Four of those injured were in serious condition. On January 13, 2006, Koptsev was charged with racially motivated attempted murder and humiliation of a religious group. He has been described by Russian media as a racist skinhead.
Stop Murder Music is a campaign to oppose Caribbean artists who produce music with lyrics alleged to glorify murder of homosexual men. The campaign was mainly against Jamaican musicians, primarily dancehall and reggae artists such as Buju Banton, Bounty Killer, and the Bobo Ashanti Rastafarians Sizzla and Capleton.
Timur Ishmuratov is a Russian citizen who was held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.
Boris Vladimirovich Stomakhin is a Russian radical political activist, and editor of "Radical politics" periodical. He was convicted three times for hate speech, incriminating him advocating a dismemberment of the Russian Federation and inciting ethnic and religious hatred, and justification of terrorism. The convictions have been questioned by human rights organizations ARTICLE 19, Committee to Protect Journalists, and Union of Councils for Soviet Jews.
The Dissenters' March was a series of Russian opposition protests that took place on December 16, 2006 in Moscow, on March 3, 2007 in Saint Petersburg, on March 24, 2007 in Nizhny Novgorod, on April 14, 2007 for the second time in Moscow, on April 15, 2007 again in Saint Petersburg, on May 18, 2007 in Samara, and on May 19, 2007 in Chelyabinsk. Some of them were featured in various media outlets.
The Other Russia, sometimes cited as Another Russia, was an umbrella coalition (2006–2008/2009/2010) that gathered opponents of President Vladimir Putin and was known as an organizer of Dissenters' Marches. The coalition brought together representatives from a wide variety of political and human rights movements, liberals, nationalists, socialists and communists, as well as individual citizens. The last Dissenters' March took place in 2008.
Nikolai Mikhailovich Girenko was a Russian ethnologist and human rights activist.
Damir Tahir ulı Zaynullin, was a 23-year-old Saint-Petersburg-born ethnic Tatar who was brutally murdered on July 1, 2007, by a gang of 17 people. Allegedly, the killers were Russian far-right skinheads.
The SOVA Center for Information and Analysis is a Moscow-based nongovernmental organization and think tank conducting sociological research primarily on nationalism and racism in post-Soviet Russia. Currently, SOVA devotes its monitoring, research and advocacy to three projects: Misuse of Anti-Extremism Legislation, Racism and Xenophobia, and Religion in Secular Society. SOVA publishes print reports in Russian and maintains a website updating readers in both Russian and English. Its reports are often cited by Western media sources including The New York Times and The Guardian.
Between 1941 and 1945, the government of Nazi Germany perpetrated the Holocaust: a large-scale industrialised genocide in which approximately six million Jews were systematically murdered throughout German-occupied Europe. Since World War II, several countries have criminalised Holocaust denial—the assertion by antisemites that the genocide was fabricated or has been exaggerated. Currently, 17 European countries, along with Israel and Canada, have laws in place that cover Holocaust denial as a punishable offence. Many countries also have broader laws that criminalise genocide denial as a whole, including that of the Holocaust. Among the countries that have banned Holocaust denial, Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Poland, Romania, Russia and Ukraine have also banned Nazi symbols. Additionally, any expression of genocide justification is also a criminal offence in several countries, as is any attempt to portray Nazism in a positive light.
Galina Sergeyevna Mezentseva is a Russian ballerina, with a career as professional classic dancer from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. Mezentseva completed her dancing studies in 1970 at the Vaganova Ballet Academy in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She was the first of the crop of tall Kirov ballerinas with long and thin lines, introducing a new aesthetic look to ballet audiences. Mezentseva is recognized as a dramatic performer, and is known for her improvisation.
Sergei Babin is a former Russian police officer who had served in the OMON detachment sent from Saint Petersburg and is an accused war criminal.
Put Domoi is a Russian street newspaper sold by the homeless in St. Petersburg, published twice monthly. The sellers receive half of the price. It was started in 1994 as Na Dne by Nochlezhka, an organization for the homeless. It was renamed to its current name in 2003. It was closely modeled after The Big Issue and is a member of the International Network of Street Papers (INSP). The paper has been critical of human rights violations in Russia which has made it some enemies. The INSP has been important for financial support and political legitimacy.
REGNUM News Agency is a Russian nationwide online news service disseminating news from Russia and abroad from its own correspondents, affiliate agencies and partners. REGNUM covers events in all regions of Russia as well as neighboring countries in Europe, Central Asia and the South Caucasus. REGNUM press centers are located in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Pskov, Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Barnaul, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Kaluga, Yerevan (Armenia).
Yuly Andreyevich Rybakov is a Russian human rights activist, a former member of the State Duma (1993–2003), a former Chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Rights (2000–2003), the founder of the magazine "Terra incognita", and a former political prisoner.
Neo-Nazism in Russia is a far-right political and militant movement in Russia. Emerging during the late Soviet era and early 1990s from white power skinheads and football hooligans, neo-Nazism in Russia has become known for a series of violent attacks and murders targeting Central Asian and Caucasian migrants. Videos of these attacks have been uploaded onto the internet by members of neo-Nazi or skinhead gangs, leading to international outcry and an eventual crackdown in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link). Human Rights First. Retrieved on 2008-06-01.