Nessuna over at di cavoli e di re has posted her thoughts on today’s protest outside the Russian Embassy in Armenia. It’s worth pointing out that not only did Nessuna tell me about the action, but she also made sure that she attended it. Unfortunately, not many other Armenians felt taking an hour out of their “busy” schedule was worth it.

The good part is there are people who care, even if it’s only a few dozen. The media was present in front of the embassy (which was good), and they accompanied the crowd to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, 45 minutes later.

Why protest? Because one cannot keep silent when racist violence is growing in Russia, and the Russian government does nothing to stop the madness. Well, the Foreign Ministry in Armenia is not any better because it is keeping silent.

Nessuna has also posted an interesting comment to the same post that would have made an excellent blog entry, but anyway.

Just talked to a friend in Moscow on icq, and she was keen on leaving Russia. The sooner the better. Jesus, the whole situation is worse than I thought.

“Of course there are fewer people in Moscow; nobody is crazy to go on a protest in Moscow,” she told me. “The situation is getting really dangerous. They will kick everybody out of Russia, and the government won’t do anything.”

Today, for example, she was approached by some guys in the subway, who showed her a photo of Bin Laden and told her to confess he was her relative. Few days ago again in the subway a 60 year old woman tripped a young girl up, just because she had dark skin. In daylight, with people watching. The girl fell down, nobody even moved.

Two days ago when she called regarding some job and asked if she could email the link to her portfolio, she was asked what nation she was and then was told there was no need to send the link, because they would not even consider hiring her. Whenever there is an announcement for selling/buying/renting something it almost always specifies FOR RUSSIANS ONLY.

Those are not skinheads, those are “normal” citizens of Russian Federation.

This makes me sick…

Anyway, RFE/RL has posted Anna’s story in English, and it pretty much sums up today’s protest. Although it is exam period for many students in Yerevan at the moment, it really is depressing to find that the vast majority of youth in Armenia are apathetic and couldn’t care less about anything.

Several dozen people staged a rare demonstration outside the Russian embassy in Yerevan on Monday to condemn and protest against the continuing racially motivated killings of Armenians and other dark-skinned residents of Russia.

The protesters, most of them representatives of several Armenian civic groups, accused Moscow of connivance and even complicity in the xenophobic violence widely blamed on tens of thousands of neo-Nazi skinheads operating across Russia. They also denounced the Armenian government’s reluctance to bring the Kremlin to task over the killings.

[…]

Russian human rights organizations say a total of at least 15 people from the Caucasus, Central Asia and Africa have lost their lives in racist attacks since January. The death toll for the last year is estimated at 28.

Few of the perpetrators of those killings have been arrested and brought to justice, with Russian law-enforcement agencies and courts notoriously lenient towards them. A case in point was the trial in Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg of seven teenagers who were convicted of collectively stabbing to death a 9-year-old Tajik girl but were sentenced to only between 18 months and five years in prison last February.

In a petition handed to Russian embassy officials, the organizers of the Yerevan protest suggested that the neo-Nazi groups guilty of the attacks are openly operating “with the sponsorship of some Russian state structures.”

[…]

The protesters also marched to the Armenian Foreign Ministry to condemn its failure to publicly criticize the Russian authorities for their failure to stop the violence. Armenia’s ambassador in Moscow and other diplomats say they regularly raise the issue with Russian officials. But the organizers of the protest insisted that Yerevan is scared of openly challenging its ex-Soviet master and closest ally.

Unfortunately, civil society in Armenia is also still rather impotent, and even the Babe Theory of Political Movements didn’t seem to help. Anyway, A1 Plus also has a news item here.

Embassy of the Russian Federation, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006