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Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Putin Announces his Plan to Deal wth Race Murder

Here is the text of a letter to the editor in today's Moscow Times:

Editor,

I am a postgraduate medical student who has been living in Russia for more than eight years and in St. Petersburg for four years. For the first time I am seeing such brutality in a democratic country like Russia. I am astonished by the lack of reaction from the government side. Governor Valentina Matviyenko does not speak on this topic or at least take some measures to control the brutal murders of innocent students, who are no different from the children of Russian parents who send their children abroad to study.

I would understand if it were the first one, but even after six murders and several attacks in this academic year, there is no response from the governor.

The whole world is shouting about this problem, but local leaders are less bothered. Should this be the situation in a country that is going to hold a Group of Eight summit? Should such a city, which does not respect human rights, be eligible to hold such a summit? Is this the Russian version of democracy?

I.V.S. Prasad
St. Petersburg

Ms. Matviyekno is a direct presidential appointment of Vladimir Putin, who has abolished the election of local governors. Here is how the Moscow Times reports Mr. Putin is dealing with the murder of foreign students:

The Kremlin has hired a leading Western public relations firm to improve foreign media coverage of the July Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg -- an unprecedented step for Russia. Kremlin spokesman Alexander Smirnov said the government had decided to employ a multi-agency team led by U.S.-based firm Ketchum in order to more effectively get across its message to Western media. Ketchum's clients include U.S firms Kodak, Pepsi, FedEx, and Procter and Gamble. It said it had won the Kremlin contract along with European PR agency GPlus and Gavin Anderson in Japan. "The idea is to improve our communications strategy using the experience of a Western PR agency. In Russia, we are preparing seriously for the G8 summit," he said.


Ah, yes. The problem of all those dead and injured dark-skinned children is a just a matter of communications. Now where have we heard THAT before? And one supposes that the root cause of the Chechnya business is Moscow's exceedingly poor pizza-delivery system.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just out of interest I ran a search on "hate crime" in Google, just to see if it is true that there is no hate crime in the country with the oldest Constitution in the world. And how surprised I was:

"Police investigate hate crime in Swampscott"

http://www.ecnnews.com/cgi-bin/05/snstory.pl?-sec-News+1k589gO+fn-swbrick-20060503-

"CU student indicted on hate crime charges in campus stabbing"

http://www.theithacajournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060504/NEWS01/605040340/1002

"Reward Offered In Hate-Crime Beating"

http://kutv.com/topstories/local_story_122105239.html

"Madison County Attack Investigated As Hate Crime"

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2006/05/03/news/05szhatecrime.txt

And on and on it goes. It turns out there are racist attacks in America on an almost daily basis. History has also shown us that America has a systematically racist police force. There are also neo-Nazi gangs and white supremacists and the KKK in America. All this, in spite of having the oldest Constitution in the world.
So, what is it? Is it that the Russians are preternaturally racist savages, as you incessantly imply, or that the causes of racist violence and hatred are much more complex than you give credit for.
This is the truth: racial attitudes in Russia are indeed lamentable, as they are in the American south, but only a very tiny amount of idiots act out this intolerance. There are also many people, many of my friends being among them, that have taken to the streets in Russia to protest against this appalling social phenomenon. Your consistent determination to skewer this truth insults an entire nation.

La Russophobe said...

You are a mendacious liar.

I never said America had no hate crime.

It's a typical KGB tactic to say that it's OK for Russia to have race murders because other countries have them.

All you are doing is providing an excuse for race murder to go on in Russia. You are beneath contempt. People just like you told Martin Luther King to shut up because American blacks didn't have it so bad compared to some places in the world.

You are a collaborator in race murder.

Anonymous said...

Where and when did I say that it's OK for Russia to have race murders because other countries have them? On the contrary, I have many Caucasian and Central Asian friends in Moscow who I would hate to see targeted by racist violence. What I do say is that you shouldn't hypocritical about implying that racism is a Russian peculiarity and an inherent feature of the Russian character. They aren't.
Realising this makes the difference between a sensible appreciation of the problem and a hysterical manipulation of the facts.

La Russophobe said...

Again, mendacious lies.

I never said racism was peculiar to Russia. But this blog isn't about OTHER countries, it's about Russia. It makes absolutely no difference HOW many OTHER countries have race problems. The fact that we recognize that OTHER countries have race problems isn't going to save the lives of any race violence in Russia, it's only going to give an excuse to those in Russia who would do nothing.

Anonymous said...

Just out of interest, what does a non-mendacious lie look like?

La Russophobe said...

Ask REITH, it's his word. I'm just mocking him. Come to think of it, if it's so interesting to you, you could have asked him long ago, couldn't you? But you didn't . . . hmmm I wonder what that means . . . IVAN + REITH sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g...