Moscow racist attacks kill 31 in 2009

Police raided 10 extremist youth groups and arrested 33 people in probes into racist crimes, including 14 murders.

MOSCOW, January 20, 2010 (AFP) - Thirty-one people of "non-Slavic" appearance were killed in attacks police classified as racist crimes in Moscow last year, the Russian capital's police chief said Wednesday.

"Last year, there were 62 attacks perpetrated on people of non-Slavic appearance, including 26 murders and 25 cases of grievous bodily harm, five of which led to death," police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Interfax.

Police raided 10 extremist youth groups and arrested 33 people in probes into racist crimes, including 14 murders, he added.

Attacks motivated by racism rose sharply after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

About 300 people were killed in such attacks between 2004 and 2008, according to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, an NGO that collates crime statistics.

A survey published in December by independent pollster Levada found that 54 percent of Russians support the nationalist slogan "Russia for Russians".

President Dmitry Medvedev said soon after the survey's publication that "severe" punishments were necessary to curb growing xenophobia in the country.

Last year's Moscow figures were down on 2008 -- a year that saw hate crimes triple in the city. City police registered 47 racist murders and 46 cases of grievous bodily harm in 2008.

Deadly racist attacks fell in Russia as a whole last year, when 74 people were killed, compared with 120 in 2008, the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights said in a report.