Racism and Discrimination in Ukraine - Race Discrimination

Race Discrimination

Racially motivated attacks occur in Ukraine while police and courts do little to intervene, the Council of Europe said in a report made public February 2008 in Strasbourg. The report also expressed concern about attacks against rabbis and Jewish students, as well as the vandalism of synagogues, cemeteries and cultural centres. "However, criminal legislation against racially-motivated crimes has not been strengthened and the authorities have not yet adopted a comprehensive body of civil and administrative anti-discrimination laws", the body said. "There have been very few prosecutions against people who make anti-Semitic statements or publish anti-Semitic literature." Discrimination against the Roma community, continuing anti-Semitism, violence in Crimea and other acts of intolerance against various ethnic groups in Ukraine were singled out in the report by the Council of Europe's racism-monitoring body, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance. Skinhead violence against Tatars and Jews is also frequent and police have offered little protection to the different communities, it said. And ECRI asked Ukrainian authorities to step up efforts to fight violence by skinheads against Africans, Asians, and people from the Middle East For instance: in December 2006 racist attacks on foreign students have been reported by the Council of Europe. The council stated that students where reluctant to report attacks because of police response to these attacks seemed to be inadequate. Many of these incidents are conducted by "skinheads" or neo-Nazis in Kiev, but similar crimes have also been reported throughout the country. In addition to incidents of assault, persons of African or Asian heritage may be subject to various types of harassment, such as being stopped on the street by both civilians and law enforcement officials. Individuals belonging to religious minorities have also been harassed and assaulted in Kiev and throughout Ukraine

Ukraine does not currently have well established movements against illegal immigration or certain ethnic groups that are common in other former Soviet states. As a European country Ukraine is prone to outside influence from the neo-nazi and supremacist movements beyond its borders. For example, in areas of Southern Ukraine that have closer cultural and linguistic ties with Russia a number of neo-nazi groups resemble those in neighbouring Russia.

Since 2005, nongovernmental (NGO) monitors in Ukraine have documented a dramatic rise in violent crimes with a suspected bias motivation. While incidents occurring in Kiev have been most accurately documented, there is evidence that incidents of violence are taking place throughout the country, including the cities of Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Lutsk, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Sevastopol, Simferopol, Ternopil, Vinnytsia, and Zhytomyr.

Representatives of the Ministry of Justice and Members of Ukrainian parliament stated that discrimination views and antisocial attitudes are practiced by a minority of the population, by fringe organizations, and by younger generation of Ukrainians; they say they are most alarmed by the younger Ukrainian's attitudes. The fact that, during the 2007 parliamentary elections, the right wing parties espousing xenophobic and racist ideology received very little support from the electorate, also points to the unpopularity of such ideas among the general population.

Bias-motivated violence has been largely committed against people of African and Asian origin, as well as people from the Middle East.