Press Release: Africans Under Attack in Moscow (January 2010)

Source: MPC Task Force on Racial Violence and Harassment

For Immediate Distribution

MOSCOW (MPC) – The new year has started off with a wave of attacks against people belonging to visible minorities, particularly Africans, across Moscow. The Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy (MPC)’s Task Force on Racial Violence and Harassment, an organization which documents verbal and physical abuse against people of color in Russia, has received several reports of severely violent attacks since the beginning of 2010. Three members of MPC’s African community were attacked in quick succession starting with an employee of the Ghanaian embassy who was beaten on New Year’s Day in an unprovoked attack while standing at a bus stop, sustaining severe cuts and bruises and spent a day in hospital for treatment. Following this assault, a Ghanaian man was repeatedly stabbed while returning from church on Sunday 10 January in a targeted attack. The victim sustained severe stab wounds, as well as a lacerated liver. Another Nigerian man was beaten on 12 January after exiting Tretyakovskaya metro station, sustaining a broken hand and severe cuts and bruises. The three victims, all of whom are active members in MPC, have survived their attacks but questions are being raised as to what is leading to this spike in violence against members of the African community in the new year. MPC is warning members of its African community to be on guard and exercise caution.

We have been given permission to share the above photo of the Ghanaian victim who was stabbed on January 10.

MPC Task Force will be releasing their regularly scheduled 4th Quarter Summary Report in the next few days. We plan to provide more details about the above mentioned attacks in that report. If you would like more information in the meantime, please contact one of us.

MPC Task Force
mpctaskforce@gmail.com
“Let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and truth.”

Vera and Sergei are greeted by African students at the dormitory. As mentioned in the previous post about the film.

Residents of the Srednyaya Akhtuba district in Russia’s Volgorgad region did not elect Guinea-Bissau native Joachim Crima to the post of District chief or to the local parliament in October 11 elections Russian press Newsru.com, Ria Novosti, and Interfax (below) report.

VOLGOGRAD Oct 12 (Interfax) – Afro-Russians who competed for heading the administration of the Srednaya Akhtuba district of the Volgograd region on October 11, took their defeat calmly. United Russia candidate Sergei Tikhonov won the race.

One of the candidates, Joachim Crima, told Interfax by phone he did not mind the defeat. “That is the voters’ choice, and life marches on. I am grateful to everyone who voted for me,” he said.

Crima said he would not quit politics. “I will continue to take part in the political life of the region, and time will show what I can do. Anyway, I will take part in the next election,” he said. “The participation of Afro-Russians in the elections is a serious step for Russia,” he said.

Here are some pics from the recent Made In Russia Battle 2009 hip-hop b-boy dance contest. Hip-hop with its roots in the 70′s black culture of New York City seemed a plausible draw for some of Moscow’s Africans. What I found among the Russians were two guys from France, two Brazilians, and a British DJ. It was an inclusive-style event with the master of ceremony making frequent shout-outs to the hip-hop universe, one world, one nation of all colors etc. Only once the Frenchmen heard chants of RO-SSI-YA RO-SSI-YA when things moved toward the final. In the us versus them dichotomy that gurgled up, they were the outsiders, the same Negroes as any Lumumba student.