Nikolai Girenko

Nikolai Mikhailovich Girenko (Russian: Николай Михайлович Гиренко)

Nikolai Mikhailovich Girenko (Russian: Николай Михайлович Гиренко; October 31, 1940 — June 19, 2004) was an ethnologist and human rights activist.

Biography

Nikolai Girenko was born in 1940 in Leningrad. On graduating the Leningrad State University he worked for several years in Africa. Girenko received recognition in Russia for his ethnology and African studies. Girenko taught in the university and worked for Kunstkamera.

Saint Petersburg's citizens elected Girenko to the first democratic Lensovet in 1990-1993. Girenko participated in the ethnic minorities rights group of this legislative body and chaired a similar committee of Saint Petersburg Union of Scientists. He provided more than 20 expert examinations at requests of Moscow's and St.Petersburg's law enforcement bodies.

Girenko managed scientific and education programs meant to foster tolerance and counter-act chauvinism. Girenko and others organized the European Conference for the Rights of Ethnic Minorities, the first of its kind in Russia, in 1991.

Nikolai Girenko took part in the trial of an ultra-nationalist newspaper "Russian Prime Minister" (Russian: Русское вече) in 2004 as an expert witness. Girenko provided expert examinations of publications of the Shultz-88 group in another trial. He consulted the investigators of the 2002 murder of a 53-year-old salesman Mamed Mamedov.

Human rights activism

Girenko organized workshops on legal counter-acting the nationalistic extremism in the city of St. Petersburg. He also expressed concern about the rights of the Russian-speaking population in the Baltic states. He participated in international human rights defenders' congresses.

Members of the nationalist cells voiced irritation in their press with Girenko's work.

Death

An anonymous attacker killed Girenko by a rifle shot through the entrance door of his St.Petersburg apartment on 19 June 2004, shortly after Girenko testified about Russian National Unity in the court.

Events that followed

Lev Borkin, Girenko's colleague, said that Girenko mentioned receiving threats. One night in November 2003, unknown individuals broke the entrance to the office of Union of Scientists and left a note, "We will be whacking you, science freaks!".

Vladimir Popov, leader of the radical group Russian Republic, claimed responsibility for the killing in an interview to the Agency of Journalistic Investigations on June 24 2004. Popov said that a "death sentence" was given to Girenko by the group.

Investigation

As of June 2005, the official investigation did not find suspects, according to the newspaper Tainy Sovetnik. Yelena Ordynskaya, senior assistant to the city Prosecutor, said the investigation found that Russian Republic published its "death sentence" to Girenko few days after the murder.

On 14 December 2005 St. Petersburg's city court convicted of inciting ethnic hatred 6 Mad Crowd members, including one of its leaders, Alexei Voevodin.

In May 2006 the city's Prosecutor Sergei Zaitsev announced that militia had arrested 8 and wanted 5 more members of the group, all by the article 209 of the Russian Criminal Code, "organizing a gang". A militiaman had killed one of the gang's leaders, Dmitry Borovikov. According to the militia, Borovikov resisted during the arrest causing the militiaman to shoot. Borovikov's girlfriend said the militiaman shot Borovikov in the back of the head without a warning. In December 2006 the third leader of Mad Crowd, former member of Shultz-88 Ruslan Melnik was convicted of inciting ethnic hatred under article 282 to 3.5 years in a penal colony.

In the beginning of 2000s extreme nationalists committed at least 26 hate murders in Russia, according to Moscow Bureau for Human Rights. Since year 2003, St. Petersburg's militia investigated ethnic hate murders of the following individuals.

• 5-year-old girl Nilufar Sangboeva of Gypsy ethnicity. Skinheads beat her and another 7-year-old girl near the Dachnaya station in the suburbs of St. Petersburg on 21 September 2003. She died the next day in the hospital.
• Kim Hen Ik, a citizen of DPRK. Criminals killed him in St.Petersburg on 14 December 2003.
• Sergei Beldy, student of the Institute of People of North, of Nenets ethnicity. Skinheads killed him in St. Petersburg on 26 December 2003.
• 9-year-old girl Khursheda Sultonova of Tajik ethnicity. A group of skinheads attacked her along with her father and her cousin when they approached their St. Petersburg apartment building after skating on 9 February 2004.
• Abdul Kadyr Boddavi, student from Syria. Criminals pushed him onto the subway tracks on 13 March 2004.
• Two Mad Crowd's own members, Rostislav Gofman and Alexei Golovchenko. They disappeared in June 2004. Investigators found their bodies in 2006 close to the village of Zahodskoye near St. Petersburg. Gofman left a list of Mad Crowd members shortly before his death.
• Nikolai Girenko, candidate of historic sciences. Anonymous criminals shot him on 19 June 2004.
• Wu An Tuan, a student of St. Petersburg's Polytech University of Vietnamese ethnicity. A group of skinheads attacked him on 13 October 2004.
• Lampsar Samba, a student from Senegal, an activist of a human rights movement African Unity. An unknown shot him on 7 April 2006. Investigators found a pump-action shotgun decorated with swastika nearby.

A court reporter Leonid Nikitinsky wrote that militia pressured and tortured teenage petty criminals from poor families, forcing them to confess in the hate murders. According to Nikitinsky, it was vice-president of the Agency of Journalistic Investigations Yevgheny Vyshenkov who revealed suspected perpetrators among the Mad Crowd members in January-February 2006 and published his findings in Tainy Sovetnik in May 2006. Nikitinsky wrote that by the time Vyshenkov discovered Mad Crowd suspects, jury trials found a group of 7 youth guilty of murdering Sangboeva, despite the evidence that militia had tortured them. Two other jury trials acquitted groups of 8 and 14 youth of charges with the murders of Sultonova and Tuan, respectively. Nikitinsky wrote that the Mad Crowd members found by Vyshenkov had confessed in ethnic hate murders, including the killing of Sangboeva, but the prosecution downplayed the role of the gang.

The investigation of the role of Mad Crowd in the hate murders continued as of December 2006. Prosecution intended to keep the earlier conviction of the 7 youth and to appeal the acquittals of the other two groups.

Homage to Girenko

The portal "Human Rights in Russia" organized a social campaign called "I don't want to hate". The authors of the campaign hope to overcome racism, ethnic discrimination and xenophobia. In Russia alone, more than 70 non-government organizations and 47 mass media editor offices are taking part in the campaign.

Scientific works

• Sociology of tribe. Published by the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St. Petersburg, 2005.
• Ethnos, culture, law. Published by the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography and Civil Control, St. Petersburg, 2005.

External links

• Girenko's biography at Kunstkamera, in Russian. Machine translation.
• Responses to the murder of the right defender Nikolai Girenko, in Russian. Machine translation.
• In memory of Nikolai Mikhailovich Girenko, Jewish Petersburg, in Russian. Machine translation.
• Obituary by Yuli Rybakov, in Russian. Machine translation.
• The "I don't want to hate" campaign, in Russian. Machine translation.
• Russian Federation: a cruel murder of the human right activist Nikolai Girenko, in Russian. Machine translation.
• The death of a giant, Russian National Unity, in Russian (dead link).
• "Sentence N1" of the "official site of the Government of the Russian Republic", in Russian. Machine translation.
• The blow was made very accurately, by Artyom Kostukovsky, AiF-Petersburg, for Novaya Gazeta. Machine translation.
• Russian Federation. Report 2005, Amnesty International.
• Death of an anti-fascist from Kunstkamera, by Uliana Skoibeda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, 11 August 2004. Machine translation.
• Verdict of extremists, by Yekaterina Blinova, Svyatoslav Timchenko. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 27 March 2006. Machine translation.