From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 9/3/2006 11:26 PM
Photo: AP
Photo: AP
Right-wingers Clash With Police as Locals Call for Expulsion of Chechens in Northern Russia

02.09.2006

MosNews
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 Vekhorovsky, 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.

Vekhorovsky 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.

Vekhorovsky 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 http://www.CityK.ru 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.
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/09/02/karelia.shtml