Student Killed in City Center Attack
By Carl Schreck and Galina Stolyarova
Staff Writer
Two brutal incidents during the last week have left one dead and two hospitalized in what some are seeing as continuations of the racial tensions that have plagued the city over the last two months. Timur Kacharava, a student at the St. Petersburg State University and frequent participant in anti-fascist meetings, was murdered on Ligovsky Prospekt on Sunday night. A preliminary police investigation revealed that Kacharava and his friend Maxim Zagibai, who is currently in hospital with severe injuries to his head and chest, were attacked by a group of youngsters at about 18.30 outside a bookstore, Interfax reported. “The prosecutor’s office is considering all possible versions, including a nationalist attack as both students were active pacifists and took part in virtually all the anti-fascist events in St. Petersburg,” read the statement of the city prosecutor’s office quoted by Interfax. In another incident, a fight broke out between two Russian men and a group of African students early Friday morning, leaving one of the Russian men hospitalized, and investigators are trying to determine whether the incident was racially motivated or simply a drunken brawl. The fight started at around 5 a.m. Friday in central St. Petersburg on the corner of Ulitsa Yegorova and 5-aya Krasnoarmeiskaya Ulitsa, after a group of students from Cameroon and Kenya left the Apollo nightclub, St. Petersburg City Prosecutor’s Office spokeswoman Yelena Ordynskaya said by telephone Friday. “They got into a confrontation with two St. Petersburg natives who came out of a different club, and after that, several more African students came out of the club to help,” Ordynskaya said. Initial reports said the African students were carrying baseball bats but the prosecutor’s office later dismissed these allegations. “The students used some sticks they found nearby when the incident was sparked,” Ordynskaya said. Police arrived on the scene and detained five of the students, while the two Russian men were hospitalized, Ordynskaya said. One of them was taken to hospital with a broken arm and has been in a stable condition since Friday, while the other was treated and released. Prosecutors of the Admiralteisky district prosecutor’s office have classified the incident as hooliganism, though no one had been arrested or charged as of Friday, Ordynskaya said. “We are examining all possible versions of these events,” she said. Initial media reports Friday cited witnesses as saying the African students were wielding baseball bats, prompting comparisons to ongoing riots in the suburbs of Paris populated by immigrant communities. Ordynskaya, however, said that no baseball bats were discovered on the scene. Reached by telephone Friday, Desire Deffo, a representative of the Cameroonian Consulate in St. Petersburg and deputy director of the “African Unity” organization, downplayed suggestions that the incident was racially motivated. “I’ve talked to participants on both sides of the fight, and they said it was just a misunderstanding,” Deffo said. The fight began as a verbal skirmish. As several African students were on their way home from the nightclub in the company of their Russian female friends, they passed the Russians drinking beer near a 24-hour shop, Deffo said. “One of the Russians asked one of the students where he was from and patted him on the shoulder, and the incident quickly grew into a fight,” Deffo said. The prosecutor’s office will organize more questioning this week, and nobody has been taken into custody, Ordynskaya said. Deffo said the police had been tactful and attentive in their treatment of everyone in the incident. The issue of immigrants and foreign students in Russia has been hotly debated in recent weeks. Following the incident on Friday, the Moscow Helsinki Group issued a statement accusing the Russian authorities of failing to respond to displays of extremism and indulging nationalists. “The country’s law enforcement agencies and courts are going to every length to protect nationalists,” Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the organization’s chairperson told reporters Friday. “The recent wave of ethnically-motivated attacks is a shame on this country.” On Nov. 4, the inaugural People’s Unity Day, 3,000 nationalists and neo-fascists marched through the center of Moscow carrying banners with anti-immigrant slogans. Moscow city prosecutors are currently investigating whether a television campaign advertisement for the City Duma elections by the nationalist Rodina party violates the law by inciting ethnic hatred. The advertisement shows Caucasus migrants throwing watermelon rinds on the ground and uses the slogan, “Let’s clear our city of garbage!” St. Petersburg has been the scene of numerous racist attacks in recent years, and Igor Rimmer, a deputy in the St. Petersburg City Duma, on Friday blamed many of the attacks on “a lack of control” over the presence of foreign students in St. Petersburg and “inarticulate migration policies,” Regnum.ru reported.
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