Russia: Activist killed by neo-Nazis in protest camp
01 October 2007
At 5am on the morning of 20 July 2007, Russian neo-nazis attacked an anti-nuclear protest camp in Angarsk in Siberia, killing the anarchist and anti-fascist activist, Ilya Borodayenko, and seriously injuring several others. In the past two years, three anti-fascists have been killed in nazi attacks in Russia; many more migrants and people from ethnic minority groups have fallen victim to far-right violence.
The action camp, organised by Autonomous Action Irkutsk, was set up in protest at the planned International Uranium Enrichment Centre in the industrial town of Angarsk. RosAtom, Russia's nuclear industry authority wants to establish the centre at the Angarsk Chemical Electrolysis Combine, in operation since 1954, with the aim of supplying fuel to Russian and other nuclear power stations and to provide an international uranium fuel bank for counties that want to develop nuclear power but do not have native uranium deposits. It would be the first such centre in the world. According to the Bellona Foundation, an international environmental NGO based in Oslo, Norway,
The project has the nod from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and the verbal endorsement of the United States, both of which see the centre as a way to control the uranium supply and discourage the efforts of perceived rogue nations to pursue nuclear power and, in turn, nuclear weapons.
The plant is situated within the boundaries of the town of Angarsk, 30 km from Irkutsk and 100 km from Lake Baikal, with neither a buffer safety area nor radiation-control zone. Since 2006, tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste have been transported from Germany and other West European countries to Russia. According Bellona, in the current plans for the Centre,
only 10 percent of the uranium-containing source materials the plant would be receiving for reprocessing would end up on its way home to the end consumer, while the waste would be left in the region for storage for an indefinite period of time. Environmentalists say this amounts to nothing less than importing radioactive waste into Russia.
For obvious environmental, health and safety dangers that the plan poses to the population, activists and environmental NGOs have been organising against the government's plans.
Neo-nazis, who according to the camp activists came from the region, attacked the camp early in the morning whilst people were sleeping in their tents; they were armed with iron pipes and beat people up, set fire to tents and stole bags and mobile phones. Ilya was on guard duty at the time and was so severely beaten that he died the following day in hospital from his various injuries and blood loss.
According to the Dutch solidarity fund XminY, which supports the action camp financially, the Russian authorities confiscated the camp's materials and told activists to leave the area as their safety could no longer be guaranteed. They also told them not to contact the press. The authorities said that the attack was not organised and classified it as vandalism.
On 30 July, assault charges were brought against the attack's alleged perpetrators. But in an unexpected turn of events, police searched the apartment of Marina Rikhvanova, a co-chair of the environmental organisation The Baikal Ecological Wave (BEW), and detained Rikhvanova's son, Pavel Rikhvanov, who according to his confession to the police on 26 July, had been among the attackers. The police confiscated BEW materials and a computer hard drive during the search of the apartment. Environmental groups are saying the local authorities are engaging in a defamation campaign, suspicious of the fact that the local public prosecution service leaked the alleged participation of Pavel in the attack to the local media. The camp's organisers have come out in support of the BEW and are demanding that the Russian authorities prosecute the perpetrators:
We do not know whether Pavel participated in the attac