Russia's Supreme Court upheld a not guilty verdict March 1 in the case of Vu An Tuan, who was stabbed to death in Russia's second city in October 2004 by a group of drunken teenagers out of alleged race-hate motives.
Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Phu Binh told Russia's Vadim Serafimov that the acquittals were met with "disappointment and dissatisfaction by the victim's family and the Vietnamese people as a whole."
On November 13, 2006, a St. Petersburg court acquitted all 17 suspects of the murder, but sentenced three to prison terms over separate attacks on foreign nationals. Prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court against the verdict.
The deputy minister urged further investigation and due punishment for those found guilty, which he said would deter similar incidents in the future. He also demanded measures to ensure the security of foreigners in Russia.
Routine attacks by skinheads and youth gangs on foreigners and people with non-Slavic features have been reported across Russia in recent years. But authorities have been generally reluctant to treat the attacks as race-hate crimes, portraying them instead as acts of hooliganism.
Another Vietnamese national died of injuries in the hospital after being attacked near the southwestern city of Voronezh in April 2006. Four teenagers were sentenced to four and a half to seven years in prison on murder charges.
An August 21 explosion at the Cherkizovsky market in northeastern Moscow, where many traders are from the North Caucasus region, former Central Asian Soviet republics, as well as Vietnam and China, killed 11 people and injured at least 49.
