Muscovites will be able to report about ethnic conflicts to authorities in charge. A center for complaints on national tension will be founded in Moscow. The center for monitoring of the ethnosocial situation will work on the basis of the Moscow House of Nationalities. Muscovites will be able to report about national tension or conflicts on ethnic grounds in their local district.
The new center will analyze the ethnosocial status and tendencies in the capital city of Russia. Experts will be able to predict hard situations and prevent possible ethnic conflicts.
Who is going to complain?
The ethnosocial monitoring center will be open for dialogue with both common city dwellers and experts equally. Any Moscow resident will have an opportunity to complain about tension or conflicts. It can be a witness or even a participant of a conflict on ethnic grounds.
The center will redirect the received data to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Federal Migration Service. Thus, Muscovites are supposed to help managing another issue – the problem of illegal migration.
In addition to that the staff of the new center will be engaged in monitoring the mass media, social networks and will keep in touch with prefectures to trace the situation in particular districts of the city. It is a reminder that since 2013 Moscow has had officials in charge of the interethnic situation. The centre is going to collaborate with them as well.
At first sight the idea seems quite good. But what if the new initiative plays a dirty trick with Muscovites? Will it make citizens more intolerant, after all instead of submissiveness they are encouraged to complain and express their discontent? Might it stir national hatred up? “This can be tested only by practice! Anyway we seek to prevent all complaints of the Muscovites", – the experts of the centre assure.
Anyway, receiving the complaints will not work on its own! First of all the center must hold a range of events aimed at national reconciliation and interethnic dialogue. There are all resources required for this purpose: the Moscow House of Nationalities cooperates with several dozens of national public organizations.
National Tension Map
Making the map of Moscow districts with national tension will become another task for conflictologists and other experts. According to experts, it will help to understand where exactly special attention should be paid and where to expect problems. Scheduled safety precautions will be undertaken in the most conflict areas. However, the format of such preventive measures remains unknown so far.
There is a similar Moscow map already. To be more exact, this map marks the places of attacks on the grounds of national hatred. The map was made by the Civil Assistance Committee and the Sova Information and Analysis Center. The project documents the cases and character of attacks on people with non-Slavic appearance. Data for the map were collected over five years on the basis of Muscovites’ views and opinions. The results are not surprising: obviously, most of the attacks happen in dormitory areas of Moscow.
Nevertheless, the new map that will be created by the national monitoring center, will give a wider picture on the problem of national tension: it will point out not only the facts of attacks, but other conflicts as well. After all assault and battery or even murder is not the only form of hatred. “We shouldn't overlook the fact that 80 percent of the conflicts called national, actually arise on domestic grounds, and not at all for interethnic reasons”, – the head of the centre points out.