Beware of the Russian skinheads

Foreign students in Russian universities beware. White Russian supremacists are coming after you.

A spate of maiming attacks and killings since last September has led officials to believe that there is an organised campaign of white supremacist terror against foreigners in Russian cities.

The latest incident came on Friday when a Senegalese student activist and anti-racism campaigner was shot dead by skinheads in St Petersburg.

The gun used to kill the student had a swastika mark on it, along with the word ‘skinheads’ and other derogatory slogans.

Previous attacks include:

• Last month two skinheads attacked a nine-year-old girl in St Petersburg. They cornered the African girl right outside her door, sliced her throat, cut her tongue and left her face covered with blood and gashes.
• Last week a Chinese/Taiwanese student was attacked outside her apartment.
• In March a Ghanaian man was brutally beaten.
• In February a man from Mali was stabbed to death.
• Last December it was a Cameroonian student who was killed.
• Last September a Congolese student was killed.

Seven people have been killed, and 79 injured, in more than 40 racist attacks this year, according to Sova, a non-governmental organisation that monitors extremism in Russia.

Last year, 28 people were killed and 366 injured in racially motivated crimes, it says.

From the list above it looks like the white supremacists are mainly targeting African students but you can never know how these skinheads operate. For them anyone who is not a white is not their kind.

I am worried for the thousands of Malaysian students, including government scholars, who are pursuing their studies in Russia.

I hope the Malaysian Students Department representative in Russia is keeping a close eye on the welfare of all our students there. I know that these students have been complaining about these skinheads to their schools and agents who got them there. I just hope it is not too late before we start doing something to protect them.

Maybe the Malaysian government should follow the Taiwanese government which issued a statement urging its citizens in Russia to avoid these skinheads.

It warned that skinhead attacks could increase in April following Adolf Hitler's birth anniversary on April 20 and Vladimir Lenin's on April 22.

So be warned foreign students.