Poutine évasif sur la lutte contre les ultra-nationalistes - AFP

Le Premier ministre Vladimir Poutine est resté vague sur la lutte contre la montée des groupes racistes en Russie, lors de sa séance annuelle de questions-réponses avec la population, quelques jours après des manifestations violentes à Moscou et des meurtres à caractère xénophobe.

Alors que Moscou a connu le week-end dernier des scènes spectaculaires, avec 6000 ultra-nationalistes scandant sous les fenêtres du Kremlin des slogans racistes et xénophobes, certains faisant le salut nazi (voir ici), Poutine n’a annoncé jeudi aucun plan d’envergure concernant la montée de ce phénomène inquiétant.

«Il faut réprimer durement toute manifestation d’extrémisme, d’où qu’elle vienne», a-t-il simplement déclaré en réponse à une question sur les violences des derniers jours à Moscou et d’autres villes du pays entre jeunes Russes nationalistes et Caucasiens.

«La Russie a été constituée dès le départ comme un Etat multiconfessionnel et multiethnique», a répondu le Premier ministre russe à une femme d’origine caucasienne qui lui disait avoir peur de sortir de chez elle après les manifestations violentes du week-end dernier à Moscou.
(lire la retranscription, il repond a cette question dans la premiere partie et non dans la seconde comme indique par l'auteur de cette depeche)

Poutine n’a pas précisé de quelle manière les autorités entendaient réagir face à ces violences qui ont révélé au grand jour l’ampleur du problème dans les grandes villes russes, à commencer par Moscou.

«Pogroms»
Il ne s’est pas particulièrement étendu sur le sujet, au cours de son intervention de près de quatre heures et demie, et n’a annoncé aucune mesure spécifique comme par exemple l’éventuelle interdiction de mouvements racistes qui appellent ouvertement à se débarrasser des non-Russes, à commencer par les ressortissants du Caucase et d’Asie centrale, musulmans pour l’essentiel.

«Le Premier ministre aurait dû condamner vigoureusement les événements le soir même des manifestations», a estimé Galina Kojevnikova, une responsable du centre Sova, ONG spécialisée dans l’observation des mouvements racistes.

Le président Dmitri Medvedev avait de son côté parlé lundi de «pogroms», après les affrontements du week-end à Moscou. Le grand mufti de Russie, Ravil Gaïnoutdine, dans une déclaration d’une rare dureté, avait dénoncé une dérive «anti-islamique» et exhorté les autorités à enrayer la montée de la xénophobie.

«Les heurts de ces derniers jours à Moscou et dans d’autres villes de Russie, accompagnés de violences et de slogans nazis (…) montrent le niveau inacceptable des sentiments anticaucasiens, anti-islamiques, anti-immigrés dans la société russe», avait-t-il souligné. «Il y a une certaine tolérance envers le fascisme chez nous», a déclaré à l’AFP Svetlana Ganouchkina, responsable d’une ONG qui aide les migrants.

Meurtres

«Il semble que les autorités voient là un moyen de lutter contre les démocrates libéraux. Cette tolérance canalise les sentiments protestataires et les détourne des autorités», a-t-elle ajouté. Les dernières manifestations à Moscou ont fait des dizaines de blessés et ces derniers temps, plusieurs meurtres ont été commis apparemment pour des raisons de haine raciale.

Dimanche, un ressortissant du Kirghizstan (Asie centrale) a été tué à Moscou par des jeunes proches de la mouvance ultra-nationaliste. Un adolescent de 14 ans figure parmi les personnes arrêtées et soupçonnées du meurtre.
Les crimes racistes en Russie sont devenus fréquents depuis la chute de l’URSS, alors que des centaines de milliers de ressortissants d’ex-républiques soviétiques, en particulier d’Asie centrale, sont venus travailler dans les grandes villes russes.

Maria Sittel: Thank you, Ernest.

Mr Putin, the country has been stirred by the recent unrest in Moscow and St Petersburg. Thousands of people wreaked havoc, beat up passers-by and chanted nationalist slogans practically next to the Kremlin walls (in Moscow) and the Winter Palace (in St Petersburg).

We have received thousands of messages on this question. Some say that the violence perpetrated by people from the North Caucasus must be stopped, while others – these are people of a wide range of different nationalities and ethnicities – demand that a definite end be put to the actions of those nationalist groups.

Here is a message from Erach Makhmadilayev, who lives in Orekhovo-Zuyevo in Moscow’s suburbs: “As a result of this unrest, people of my nationality cannot leave their homes to go to work. The police are not doing anything. I am asking the authorities to intervene.”

And here is another message on the same issue, from Andrei in Krasnoyarsk: “Do you think it was the government’s leniency regarding people from the North Caucasus that sparked this aggression in Russians?”

Vladimir Putin: Actually, we must cut short extremist actions on all sides, no matter where their origins lie. And we must not tar everyone from the North Caucasus or indeed any other nationalities, in fact anyone at all, with the same brush. But we must be ruthless in cracking down on all extremist actions.

The general public, including the liberal section of society, has to understand this, and I think that everyone would agree that we need law and order and that it must be upheld. One of the government’s functions is to guarantee the interests of the majority. This is the first point.

Second, we often, justifiably, criticise our law-enforcement agencies. It’s no accident that we have major reform plans in this sphere.

But while fighting negative elements in our law-enforcement agencies, including the police, we must not tar everyone with the same brush. We need to understand that these agencies are entrusted with a vital state function and we must not treat them like dirt; otherwise our liberal intelligentsia will have to shave off their beards, don their helmets and go out onto the streets and squares to fight the radicals.

I think this would be the absolute worst-case scenario, because everyone has their role to play, their job to do: for some this is operating TV cameras, for others it’s holding the microphone, while others go out onto the streets to fight the radicals. However, the state must certainly fulfil its functions in strict compliance with the laws that are in force.

Maria Sittel: Mr Putin we have received another related question by SMS: What about the Russians living in the North Caucasus? What will happen to them after the events in Moscow?

Vladimir Putin: I think we should cast away all fears. People from any Russian region, be it the Caucasus, the Far East, Siberia or Central Russia, should feel at home in their country wherever they live. Regional authorities must play a key role here, and public organisations, too.

What’s important is that all Russian people, all Russian citizens of any ethnicity or religion identify themselves as part of a single nation.

To make sure people feel at home everywhere in Russia, we must all behave appropriately, so that a person from the Caucasus feels safe walking around Moscow, and Russians of Slavic ethnicity feel safe living in the North Caucasus. People of all ages must have a shared awareness that they have one homeland. One of our main objectives here is to ensure that all people can live and feel safe and comfortable everywhere in the country.

I must reiterate what I have said on multiple occasions: Russia has originated as a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country.

Our religion is Eastern Christianity, or Orthodox Christianity. Some theorists argue that it is in fact even closer to the principles of Islam than to Catholicism. I would not like to assess how close this statement is to reality, but it is certainly true that these religions have coexisted for centuries. They have developed a communication culture over these centuries – not over the past few decades. We must look back to those centuries.
...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin employed tough talk about the “bacillus of nationalism” and warned liberals that they should thank police for protecting them from racist thugs in his 10th annual call-in show on Thursday.


After a week of unrest in Moscow and other cities, Putin was forced to respond to widespread clashes between nationalist football fans, Caucasus natives and the OMON riot police during the four-hour TV show.


Police detained a total of 1,700 people nationwide on Wednesday in a crackdown after a rally of 5,000 nationalists and football fans on Manezhnaya Ploshchad turned violent on Saturday, landing up to 30 people in the hospital.

‘Shave their little beards’

“Extremism should be stopped – and liberals need to understand this,” Putin said, in answer to “thousands and thousands” of questions regarding this week’s riots. “Law and order must be maintained.”

The police should not be criticised for carrying out an important job, Putin said, adding that demeaning them was unacceptable.

“Otherwise, the liberal intelligentsia will have to shave their little beards and put on helmets” to fight the riots themselves, Putin said.

Putin wasn’t the first official to allude to the liberal opposition in connection to the week’s race riots.

Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin deputy chief of staff widely seen as the administration’s senior ideologist, blamed the liberal opposition for this week’s violent protests.

“What, we need another revolution? Another destruction of everything?” he told Izvestia in an interview published on Thursday. “It was the ‘liberal’ public that insisted on popularising unsanctioned protests, and the Nazis and goons are following the fad. The 11th is derived from the 31st,” he said, referring to the Manezh riot on Dec. 11 and the “Strategy 31” opposition rallies defending the right to free assembly spelled out in Article 31 of the Constitution.

In contrast to the Manezh riot on Saturday, when riot police waited before breaking up the nationalist rioters, they forcefully quashed an anti-government protest on Sunday.

Message to the police

But Putin wasn’t about to let the police off the hook entirely over the rioting, and called on them to act decisively against rioting from whatever source.

“But the police should respond to any show of violence, no matter who it comes from,” he said pointedly. “And not show delay, weakness or cowardice.”

Earlier he had called nationalism a “bacillus” infecting the country. Society, he said, needs to strengthen its immune system. “When society shows weakness, then this bacillus comes to the surface.”

He added that the police was at fault in failing to adequately prosecute the assailants of Spartak fan Yegor Sviridov, who died from a gunshot wound last week after a street brawl between Slavic football fans and Caucasus natives.

Riots were “provoked by the fact that the government did not react adequately. It turned out that the people involved in the murder were released,” he said. “Law enforcement organs should know what kind of modern communication methods are used by radical elements.”

Сразу несколько вопросов из разных регионов страны были заданы по поводу недавних событий на Манежной площади, где были устроены беспорядки. Путин повторил несколько раз - подобные акции будут жестко пресекаться, это во всех смыслах слова вопрос национальной безопасности страны. В том, что подобное стало возможным, виноваты и те представители власти, которые приняли неверные решения после драки, в ходе которой был убит один из неформальных лидеров объединения футбольных болельщиков.

Владимир Путин: "Нужно пресекать проявления экстремизма со всех сторон, откуда бы они ни исходили. И нельзя общей краской мазать ни кавказцев, ни людей других национальностей, хотя такой национальности, как кавказец, нет. Вообще никого нельзя мазать общей краской. Но нужно жестко пресекать любые крайние проявления. Наша общественность, в том числе и либеральная, должна понимать - порядок должен быть и его нужно поддерживать. Государство на то и существует, чтобы обеспечить интересы большинства. Мы много и справедливо высказываем критики в адрес правоохранительных органов. Неслучайно и серьезные реформы намечены в этой сфере. Но проводят борьбу с негативными проялвлениями в органах правопорядка, в том числе и милиции, и здесь нельзя всех мазать черной краской. Нужно понять, что эти органы власти исполняют важнейшую функцию в государстве и нельзя опускать их ниже плинтуса. А то придется нашей либеральной интеллигенции бороденку сбрить, самим надеть каску и вперед, на площадь, воевать с радикалами. Выходцы из всех регионов Российской Федерации должны себя одинаково комфортно чувствовать, где бы они ни проживали".

Телевизионные камеры, с помощью которых россияне задавали премьеру вопросы, были установлены в самых разных местах. На горнолыжном склоне, в трубопрокатном цехе, а в Чебоксарах – в одном из крупных медицинских центров, который построен в рамках реализации государственной программы модернизации здравоохранения. Здесь делают уникальные операции на самом современном оборудовании. С Путиным общался, например, человек, которому в этом центре заменили поврежденный плечевой сустав на искусственный

vercingetorix
"Poutine n’a pas précisé de quelle manière les autorités entendaient réagir face à ces violences qui ont révélé au grand jour l’ampleur du problème dans les grandes villes russes, à commencer par Moscou."

http://www.courrierinternational.com/breve/2010/12/16/800-interpellations-a-moscou-pour-eviter-les-violences

Autant de désinformation que sur les méchants Serbes et les gentils Kosovars ou plus encore sur la Russie ?
Libé est le seul quotidien à ne pas relayer les infos sur le trafic d'organes prélevés sur des prisonniers Serbes dans lequel est impliqué le premier ministre
du Kosovo. Ce pudique silence a-t-il un rapport avec BHL ?