Attacks on ethnic minorities continue to occur in Ukraine at the record pace set in January of this year, according to UCSJ's Kiev monitor Vyacheslav Likhachyov. Mr. Likhachyov's latest report, summarized below, covers the months of February and part of March, and includes both reports of obvious hate crimes and attacks on minorities that may be ordinary crimes.

On February 2, three separate attacks on minorities took place in Kiev. Four young men attacked a Spaniard with a taser near the University metro station, knocking him to the ground and kicking him multiple times. The victim sought medical attention. Two young men attacked a Nigerian near the Shulyavka metro station. Later that same day, three youths attacked two foreign students near their dormitory. The students' friends heard the attack and came to their aid, holding the assailants until the police arrived. While investigators are focusing on jealousy as the motive for the attack, one of the victims reportedly identified an assailant as a participant in multiple racist assaults last year.

To their credit, on February 4, police announced the detention of four college students in relation to a January attack on a 42 year old citizen of Ghana in Kiev. It is not clear what motive investigators are ascribing to the attackers. Unfortunately, that same day, Ukraine's minister of justice Nikolai Onishchuk continued a pattern of denial when it comes to racist violence by some Ukrainian officials. In a meeting with Ake Petersen, a Council of Europe official, Mr. Onishchuk reportedly denied that there is a pattern of racist violence in Ukraine. "Nowadays one can only speak about separate incidents, each of which is being carefully investigated," the minister said.

On February 9, in the village of Nizhnegorsky (Crimean Republic), vandals damaged over 200 gravestones in a Crimean Tatar cemetery. The vandals were particularly determined, killing the cemetery's guard dog and destroying part of the fence. Investigators detained two suspects from a far-right Cossack organization that has clashed with Crimean Tatars in the past, but so far are only charging them with grave desecration rather than a hate crime.

On February 16 near the Paton Bridge in Kiev, three young men assaulted the military attache of the Indian embassy, beating him in front of his daughter before jumping on a street car to escape. The next day, around 20 neo-Nazis spotted two dark-skinned refugees on Mayakovsky Street and chased them into a supermarket. The extremists lay in wait for their victims outside the store, screaming racist threats until police arrived to disperse them.

On February 14, the mufti of Simferopol (Crimean Republic) went on local TV to show viewers a swastika emblazoned leaflet that threatened Muslims with death if they build a mosque in the city. The mufti said the leaflets were distributed around the city.

On February 18, neo-Nazis in Dnepropetrovsk assaulted a citizen of Nigeria.

Back in Kiev, on February 19, three young men described by witnesses as skinheads attacked a 40 year old Nigerian man. When he resisted, they maced and stabbed him. Both the victim and one of the assailants was hospitalized. Incredibly, the Nigerian was charged with assault (he used a metal pipe to strike out at his attackers and injured one of them). UCSJ learned more details of this case today from the Kharkov Human Rights Protection Group--Ukraine's leading human rights organization. According to their report, the investigator in charge of the case objected to the victim characterizing his actions as defense against a racist attack, arguing that there are no grounds to state that the assault was motivated by racism. Police allowed man accused of wielding the knife, a Russian citizen, to leave the country for medical treatment, and are reportedly focused on the injuries he suffered rather than the knife wound in the Nigerian man's body.

That same day in Kiev, a group of young men attacked an African woman in the Troeshchina district, breaking a bottle over her head. The next day (February 20), a group of youths attacked two foreign students near the MAUP university, sending them both to the hospital (see UCSJ report at: http://www.fsumonitor.com/stories/022708Ukraine.shtml). Kiev's police chief responded to media reports on this attack with the incredible assertion that no racist crimes were committed in Kiev over the last year, even though the suspects were dressed like skinheads and admitted that they shouted skinhead slogans during the attack.

On February 29, police in Kiev announced the detention of two youths in connection with the murder of a Congolese refugee, an incident that prompted a statement of concern from the UNHCR about 17 incidents of verbal and physical violence against refugees last year in Ukraine. (Background Information: http://www.fsumonitor.com/stories/030508Ukraine2.shtml).

On March 8, a citizen of Sierra Leone was murdered in Kiev in front of his wife. The victim was not robbed, increasing the possibility that the killing was a hate crime. (Background Information: http://www.fsumonitor.com/stories/031408Ukraine2.shtml). Police later detained two young suspects in a train station as they tried to flee the city.

On March 12 in the village of Oktyabrskoe (Crimean Republic) three youths tried to vandalize a local mosque. They broke through the mosque's door while drunk, but parishioners detained one of them and called the police. Later that day, one of the vandals' relatives came to the mosque and fixed the door.

That same day in Kiev, the country's Minister of Internal Affairs, Yuri Lutsenko, announced that police in Kiev had identified over 500 neo-Nazis in that city, and that the problem of "racist violence concerns us, not only in Kiev but in all of Ukraine." At the same time, he responded defensively to reports of increasing violence against refugees in Ukraine. "If you'd like to know, I'll tell you why people become refugees--it's so they don't get deported," he reportedly said. "Illegal immigrants send requests to the Ministry of Justice, become applicants for this status, and thereafter freely walk the streets of Ukrainian cities rather than being in detention, where the law dictates they should be."

Finally, on March 14, Minister Lutsenko met with US Ambassador William Taylor to discuss law enforcement issues. Minister Lutsenko candidly stated that crimes against foreigners were increasing because "in Ukraine there are many racially intolerant youth groups," to which Ambassador Taylor responded that police investigations of these crimes has not been very effective.

[HOME] [ACT] [CONNECT] [JOIN] [ABOUT] [SEARCH]