Racism in Russia: Russia bombing highlights discrimination faced by those from Caucasus (LAT)

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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-russia-caucasus-20110126,0,4906150.story

Racism in Russia: Russia bombing highlights discrimination faced by those from Caucasus
With terrorists from the Caucasus region blamed for the attack, life for one young man may get even tougher. 'They will never accept me as an ordinary Russian because my hair and eyes are dark.'
By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times

At 15, Israil Mirzakhanov was at a crossroads: He could stay home in the Caucasus region, where several of his friends already had been taken from their homes and had turned up dead in the street. Or he could take his chances with the rampant discrimination in Moscow. Four years later, now a tall and fit-looking college student, he becomes something of a pariah when he steps out on the snowy streets of the capital. He tries not to look people in the eyes because he knows what he'll see. Fear. Anger. When he takes a seat on a metro train, someone sitting next to him might move to the other end of the car. This week, in the wake of another bombing immediately blamed on extremists from the Caucasus, Mirzakhanov faced more of the same. Emerging with four friends from a police booth at a metro station Tuesday, he said he felt fortunate to be detained for only half an hour.

For more than a decade, Russian officials have emphasized tough tactics against Islamic militants and separatists in the patchwork of republics along the north rim of the Caucasus. Critics say the approach followed by President Dmitry Medvedev and particularly his political mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has only driven more people into the arms of the insurgents. At the same time, they say, violence in the Caucasus and retaliatory terrorist attacks in the Russian heartland have hardened attitudes toward people from the Caucasus, and the Kremlin has shown little inclination to counter the discrimination.

"I am a foreigner here in my own land," Mirzakhanov said. "They will never accept me as an ordinary Russian because my hair and eyes are dark." A week earlier, he said, he was held for six hours at a central Moscow police station. "When I asked what my problem was, a policeman yelled at me: 'Look at your face and you will see your problem.'" Mirzakhanov is a Russian citizen, but comes from a town in the republic of Dagestan on the border with Chechnya...

"If you open any popular Moscow daily and look at its crime section, or watch a crime program on a federal television channel, you will gather that an overwhelming majority of crimes are committed by members of the Caucasus diasporas," said Alexander Aratov, publisher of the nationalist Russkaya Pravda newspaper. "If these people from the Caucasus come here to stay they must behave properly, or go home." Roving gangs of young Russian nationalists target people from the Caucasus and Central Asia, beating, robbing and sometimes killing them... When Russian nationalists rallied last month in Moscow, Mirzakhanov didn't go out. Some of his friends were beaten at a metro stop. "They beat them up for a long time, kicking them hard, and not a single policeman interfered," he said...

[madrchsod]

1. stormfront has a very strong presence in russia.

i`ve read the posts from the russian posters on stormfront and it`s not pretty.