Deutsche Welle reports that in the first five months of this year there have been 72 race-based murders in Russia. That’s three per week, and 22 more than occurred in all of 2007, when such killings averaged a shocking one per week. Just this past weekend, the Moscow Times reported on a “brawl between ethnic Russians and natives of the Caucasus in northeastern Moscow” which “left three people hospitalized with head injuries and stab wounds. Fifteen to 20 people armed with knives and metal pipes clashed at around 11:30 p.m. Sunday.” One of Russia’s leading football clubs can’t sign black players because they would be killed by their own fans. Formal warnings were issued to the team when it recently contested a match in Great Britain to refrain from racist violence.

Four points are most striking.

First, these attacks aren’t occurring in backwards, rural areas where intolerance might be expected. The vast majority are occurring in Russia’s two largest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Second, the attacks are aimed at people who are perceived as being immigrants — but why should hostility to immigrants be rising if, as Russia’s regime is fond of claiming, the nation’s economic fortunes are so good. If Russians are enjoying widespread prosperity, why would begrudging hatred against immigrants be rising so rapidly?

Third, we actually see racist Russians adopting the salute and swastika of Nazi Germany, the regime that subjected Russia to so much horror during World War II, and we see Russians turning a blind eye to it all, just as they did during the holocaust carried out by Josef Stalin.

And fourth, what we hear from Russia’s rulers, Medvedev and Putin, is stony silence on the question of race violence. One can easily point to remarks they’ve uttered condemning the United States, but where are their statements of condemnation for Russian racists, and their plans for action to protect Russia’s minority communities? If anything, their remarks have only served to fuel racist fervor.

Writing in the Moscow Times Susanne Scholl, Moscow bureau chief of Austrian Public Television, states:

In Russia, if you have dark hair and a slightly swarthy complexion, you are likely to be in danger. Sadly, the country’s leaders have tolerated, if not encouraged, fear of foreigners and assaults on those whose appearance differs from the average Russian. The authorities tend to play down these attacks as the acts of rowdies — even when the perpetrators are caught and can be prosecuted. This is because charging someone with racism and xenophobia is more complicated and the process more drawn out than winning a conviction for simple thuggery. Since the day that then-President Vladimir Putin spoke on television of wasting Chechen terrorists in the outhouse, hatred of Caucasus natives has become all but socially acceptable. Once again, a subgroup of the population has been declared outlaws and potential terrorists, satisfying people’s urge to find a clearly identifiable enemy who can be blamed for all that is wrong in the country.

There is breathtaking irony in Russians’ refusal to treat Chechens as equals because of their skin color and yet simultaneously to insist that Chechnya is “part of Russia” and cannot have its freedom. In essence, Russians are asserting a right to hold Chechnya in a condition of slavery. And at the same time as Russians are oppressing minorities with brutal violence, and seeking to annex former Soviet states like Georgia and Ukraine, they turn and complain to the West that it fails to treat Russia like an equal.

Scholl explains: “The Soviet Union was anything but tolerant. But since its collapse, a gnawing feeling of inferiority has crept into Russian society. Both the state and openly racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic groups — of which there are dozens, as well as more than 100 clearly xenophobic publications — increasingly ignore the country’s multi-ethnic character. In an everyday context, this is reflected in slogans like “Russia for Russians,” which really means white European Russians.”

Perhaps the greatest outrage, however, lies in the silence of the West. One might not expect anything different from a country that chooses to be governed by a proud KGB spy, but we in the West have already seen Russia destroy human rights once. Are we going to stand by and let it happen all over again?