by Sat Dec 18, 12:10 pm ET
MOSCOW - Russian news agencies say Moscow police have arrested 500 people to
stop them attending rival protests over the killing of a soccer fan and the
ethnic *** that erupted after the slaying.
A young Moscow man was fatally shot with *** bullets during a fight with
people from the Russia's Caucasus region at a bus stop this month.
People from the Caucasus are typically darker-skinned than northern Russians
and many are Muslim. They have traditionally been victims of ethnic
discrimination in Russia.
After the killing, mobs attacked people from the Caucasus in a riot outside
the Kremlin on Dec. 11.
Police have largely kept a lid on protests since then, arresting hundreds of
people - both Slavs and non-Slavs.
Opposition leaders have accused authorities of encouraging *** as a
pretext to introduce legislation that would see participants in unauthorized
rallies serve prison time, rather than the current minimum fine. The next
presidential elections are in 2012.