Dormitory Lockdown - - in Moscow
It's those skinheads celebrating hitler's birthday again. Because balloons and cake are just not enough:
MOSCOW — A leading Moscow university ordered its foreign students on Thursday to remain in their dormitories for the next three days because of fears of ethnic violence before Adolf Hitler's birthday, students said.
Hundreds of students at the prestigious Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy were told to stock up on food and warned they would not be let out of the dormitories through Saturday in an attempt to protect them amid a marked rise in hate crimes.
Ethnically motivated violence tends to increase in the days leading up to and after Hitler's birthday on April 20, when some members of ultra-nationalist organizations shout slogans and stage attacks on dark-skinned foreign and other non-Slavic-looking people.
The measure at Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy did not appear to be exclusive. Other universities and organizations have in the past also warned foreigners of possible violence ahead of Hitler's birthday. In Moscow, authorities have closed down some outdoor markets over the last couple of years where many traders are foreigners.
Liah Ganeline, a second-year student at Sechenov from Israel, said authorities have locked down her dormitory in southern Moscow — which houses about 500 students from Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus region — every April 20 for the past several years. She said officials call it a fire safety drill.
She said another dormitory housing several hundred students in central Moscow was subject to similar restrictions.
Ganeline said, however, that all students were aware of the real reason, and noted that someone had scrawled the word "skinheads" over an announcement of the lockdown posted on a dormitory wall. Last year, she said, a group of skinheads threw firebombs at the dormitory building after shouting offensive slogans and giving the Nazi salute.
...Russia has seen a marked rise in racism and xenophobia over the past several years, with nonwhite or dark-skinned residents, foreigners and Jews bearing the brunt of the violence. According to the human rights center Sova, which monitors xenophobia, 53 people were killed in 2006 and 460 others were injured in apparent hate crimes.
Activists say authorities do little or nothing to combat the problem and that obvious hate crimes are regularly classified as mere hooliganism.
Alexander Brod, head of the Moscow Bureau for Human rights, said authorities should do more to prosecute hate groups and protect foreign students rather than subject them to restrictions.
"The activity of radicals is significantly increasing," he said. "But the decisions of the university officials ... must not violate the freedom of movement of foreigners."
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