Hitler’s Birthday Sparks Fears At Moscow School
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MOSCOW — A Moscow university has warned its large number of foreign students against leaving the campus today, Adolf Hitler’s birthday, fearing racist attacks which traditionally peak that day.
“We have responsibility for security on the territory of the university,” Galina Kuzmina, press secretary at Moscow’s Russian University of People’s Friendship, said by telephone yesterday. “We can’t answer for other parts of Moscow. We can’t forbid students from leaving the campus, that would be stupid. But we recommend they stay.”
Racist crimes have soared in Russia in recent years. At least 54 people were killed in racially motivated attacks last year and 520 were wounded, according to Sova, a Moscow-based institute that monitors violence against ethnic minorities. The group recorded 36 deaths from such attacks in 2005, with 399 people injured.
The University of People’s Friendship, originally named after Congolese anti-colonial leader Patrice Lumumba, who was assassinated in 1961, has about 1,700 foreign students living on its campus in Moscow, Ms. Kuzmina said.
“For eight years now, not one skinhead has managed to enter the territory of the university” to attempt to attack students, Ms. Kuzmina said. “We don’t allow any chances for anyone to beat a student up here.”
