The Nashi youth movement holds a demonstration in Moscow on November 17, 2006 protesting the removal of a monument to Soviet soldiers that stands in Tallinn, Estonia.
Photo: Pavel Smertin
| Other Photos |
 |
|
 |
A Bloody Weekend for Foreign Students
// Three Foreign Students Attacked in Voronezh
Last weekend saw a string of attacks on foreign students in the Russian city of Voronezh. Between Friday night and Sunday morning, various assailants attacked Faris Faleh, an Iraqi studying at the Technical Academy of Voronezh, Adema Uduak Francis, a Nigerian student at Voronezh State Medical Academy, and Al-Sharami Ali Abdus-Saleh, a Yemeni student at Voronezh State University. Investigators maintain that the attacks on the foreign students were not motivated by racial hatred and are treating the cases as simple hooliganism.
The first victim was Faris Faleh, a 22-year-old student from Iraq, who was attacked last Friday at around 10:30 PM as he walked down a main street in central Voronezh. According to investigators, Mr. Faleh was returning home from a trip to the store when he was approached by three intoxicated young men who mockingly demanded that Mr. Faleh give them the items that he had purchased at the store. When he refused, the three assailants began to hit and kick him. After several minutes, the attackers fled empty-handed. Without seeking medical help, Mr. Faleh reported the incident to the Central Prosecutor's Office, which opened an investigation into hooliganism. The next day, police arrested three unemployed men, Roman Simonov, 20, Vitaly Pervushin, 20, and Vitaly Berdnikov, 19, on suspicion of the attack on Mr. Faleh. All three maintain their innocence.
The second attack took place at approximately the same time in a student dormitory not far from where a student from Guinea-Bissau was murdered in February 2004. This time the victim was 26-year-old Adema Uduak Francis, a Nigerian student. Mr. Francis was also attacked by three young men, who beat him without any apparent provocation with their fists and feet before he managed to escape into the dormitory. Upon looking out a window in the dormitory the next day, Mr. Francis recognized the three men who had attacked him the night before among a group of youths gathered alongside the building. He immediately called the police, who detained a 17-year-old and a 21-year-old who were identified by Mr. Uduak as the assailants. On Sunday the prosecutor's office charged the men with hooliganism under the same statute as in the case of Mr. Faleh's attackers. The two men who were arrested for attacking Mr. Uduak admitted that they "did not figure that an assaulted foreigner would go to the police."
The motive for the third attack, which took place in the early hours of Sunday in northern Voronezh, was purported to be an argument between foreigners and Russians in the Parnas nightclub. According to reports, seven Arab students from various countries were partying at the club at around 2:30 AM when 23-year-old Al-Sharami Ali Abdus-Saleh, a second-year student of history at VGU who is originally from Yemen, and 20-year-old Maharamye Fahid, a Palestinian student at the same university, got into an argument with several other patrons, who accused the foreign students of improperly approaching several young women. The club's bouncers broke up the fight and sent Mr. Saleh and Mr. Fahid back to their dormitory in a taxi. On the way home, the two students had stopped to buy some liquor at a kiosk when two cars pulled up behind them and nine men armed with wooden bats piled out. The men knocked Mr. Fahid aside and savagely beat Mr. Saleh, who suffered a concussion and a broken arm. Yesterday the local prosecutor's office again alleged that hooliganism was the sole motive for the attack.
According to Mikhail Usov, a senior assistant in the prosecutor's office, investigators are not considering the possibility that the attacks may have been motivated by racial hatred. "Most likely, this is just a case of unmotivated hooliganism," he explained, adding that all three of the investigations are being carried out by the corresponding regional police departments. Other officials in the prosecutor's office say that the behavior and appearance of the young men arrested in conjunction with the attacks on Mr. Faleh and Mr. Francis "do not bring to mind" members of extremist gangs. "It isn't surprising that they attacked the Iraqi, for example. It was the day after the holiday on March 8, and the attackers were probably just continuing to celebrate," said an official in the prosecutor's office.
A Short History of Attacks on Foreigners in Voronezh
On February 21, 2004, Amaru Antonio Lim, a medical student from Guinea-Bissau, was murdered in the center of Voronezh. On October 9, 2005, Enrique Arturo Angeles Hurtado, a Peruvian student at the architectural institute in Voronezh, was beaten to death at the Olympic sports stadium. A group of schoolboys from Ostrogozhsk savagely attacked Chan Ngok Binya, a Russian citizen of Vietnamese descent, on April 6, 2006. He died three days later. The guilty parties in all three cases received harsh sentences: the three men who killed Amaru Lim were sentenced to nine to seventeen years in prison, while Igor Pavlyuk, the man who was identified as the killer among the 13 who attacked Enrique Hurtado, was sentenced to 16 years of hard labor. The other 12 are serving sentences of between two and five years in prison. The men who attacked Chan Binya were sentenced to four and a half to seven years in jail. In response to the spate of murders targeting foreigners, regional prosecutor Alexander Ponomarev has repeatedly called on local officials and police to acknowledge the mistakes that are being made in combating extremism by officials eager for a quick open-and-shut case. Foreign students themselves have said numerous times that they do not feel safe in Voronezh and do not trust local law enforcement officials. According to deputy police chief Vyacheslav Bezborodov, foreigners themselves are partly to blame for provoking "criminal acts – they live with underage girls and sell narcotics." Clearly, regional prosecutor Nikolai Shishkin and police chief Oleg Khotin, both of whom were named to their posts last year, still have not gotten a handle on murders motivated by racial hatred.
Oleg Grigorenko (Voronezh)
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 12, 2007
|
|
|
