MOSCOW (AP) – Authorities on Monday detained four activists of a radical party for holding an unauthorized protest against Chinese migrants in a Siberian city, police said.
Two members of the National Bolshevik Party chained themselves to the regional office of the Federal Migration Service in Irkutsk in a bid to stop the flow of migrants from neighboring China, said Alexander Popov, regional police spokesman.
Law enforcement officers unchained the activists and took them and two fellow protesters to a police station, Popov said.
“Let us stop China’s expansion” the group said on its Web site, adding that “Russia is not Chinatown.”
Irkutsk is located about 4200 kilometers (2,600 miles) east of Moscow.
Russia’s sparsely populated but resource-rich Far East and Siberia rely on migrant labor from neighboring Asian countries, mainly China.
The Chinese population in Russia is estimated to have grown from just a few thousand in 1989 to 3.26 million, according to the unpublished results of a 2002 census. Most work in markets, construction and agriculture.
The large Chinese presence has stoked fears in Russia. Popov said, however, that a recently passed migration law, which imposed restrictions and quotas on foreign labor, had led many Chinese to leave the city.
The National Bolshevik Party, whose members wear hammer-and-sickle armbands, is a small radical leftist group that promotes nationalist ideas. The group is known for political pranks and street theater that have largely targeted President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin leadership.
