MOSCOW, January 11 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's president called Thursday for more active measures to counter nationalism, xenophobia, and religious and racial intolerance, which he said not only violate human rights but also threaten national stability and security.
Vladimir Putin's statement, addressed to human rights organizations, comes amid growing xenophobic trends in the country, which has been plagued by a series of brutal attacks, some of them fatal, on non-Slavic foreigners in recent years.
"Unfortunately, the activities of extremist organizations do not always receive a principled public and political assessment, and I believe political parties, civil society institutions, and non-governmental organizations [NGOs] should all have a strong say on the issue," Putin told the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights Institutions in the Kremlin.
Putin said he backed the council's initiative to draw up a federal program on the civil education of the Russian population.
"This project will help consolidate society and teach people tolerance and respect for human rights and freedoms," the president said.
A recent string of attacks on foreign students has cast a shadow over several Russian cities, in particular Russia's second city St. Petersburg, and Voronezh, about 310 miles south of Moscow, which have traditionally been popular destinations for foreign undergraduates.
In St. Petersburg, a student from Senegal was killed in April and a nine-year-old girl of mixed Russian-African origin was stabbed in early 2006. A nine-year-old girl from Tajikistan died of stab wounds in February 2004 in the city when a group of young men attacked her, her father and an 11-year-old cousin.
Russia's northwestern republic of Karelia was hit by a wave of anti-migrant riots in September when angry crowds attacked businesses owned by locally-based Chechens, demanding that all migrants from the Caucasus region be driven out.
In his address, the Russian leader also responded to Western attacks on a law on NGOs, passed in April on his initiative. The law imposed more stringent and complicated financial reporting and registration requirements for NGOs, fueling criticism from rights organizations and Western governments that Russia is backsliding on civil rights and freedoms.
"As far as I know, concerns about the authorities' crackdown on NGOs have proved to be unsubstantiated," Putin said.
The president praised NGOs for improving the situation for prisoners in Russian jails and pre-trial detention centers, and curbing police violence against inmates.
"The situation is changing, slowly but surely, thanks to the consistency and perseverance of rights organizations," Putin said.
The president also said the government was considering various means of supporting NGOs.
"Last week, we discussed various possibilities of backing NGOs, including through contests and grants," he said, adding that parliament had passed a law in December regulating the formation and use NGOs' resources.
"The law offers a fairly precise mechanism for providing grant support for NGOs dealing with key social problems, including the protection and application of human rights," Putin said.
