| The police took foreign students to the ground The investigation into yet another murder of a foreign student has again quarreled the power structures of St. Petersburg. The leadership of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate almost immediately declared the crime solved, the prosecutor's office said that it knew nothing of the kind, and the student community, in turn, again accused city officials of being unwilling to acknowledge the existence of racism in the city.
Last Thursday, about 150 students from Asian and African countries came to the Mariinsky Palace, where the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg meets. A day earlier, the African, Arab and Oriental communities created in the city were shocked by the news of the death of Roland Franz, a Congo-born student at the Epassac Forestry Academy, who was brutally beaten on September 9. All students were not allowed into the parliamentary palace, and only a few delegates were invited, who were already awaited by the head of the criminal police of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, Vladislav Piotrovsky. It was he who said that skinheads had nothing to do with the next death of a black student. According to the police, the circumstances of the incident are trivial - a drunken brawl.
Mr. Piotrovsky told the student delegates that the crime had been solved, the identities of its participants had been established, and the murder occurred on a domestic basis: “On the evening when the student from the Congo was attacked, he was drinking with his brother in the apartment he rented with his brother. him and another acquaintance drank alcoholic drinks. He was familiar with the ugliest contingent of the area, and when he went outside, the attack happened.” Aliu, head of the African Unity organization, left the Legislative Assembly stunned: “We were not allowed to speak, citing lack of time: the police chief looked at his watch and left. Why are they trying to turn a blind eye to this problem, it exists, we are persecuted only because we have a different skin color.” People who knew Roland say that he did not drink, and therefore the accusations of a domestic fight and communication “with the ugliest contingent” are considered fiction. The students interpreted Mr. Piotrovsky’s words unambiguously: “It’s your own fault!” And they went to ask for help from Governor Valentina Matvienko, unfurling the slogan “The day before yesterday they killed an Arab student, yesterday a Vietnamese student, today an African one, who will be killed tomorrow?”
Under such a banner, foreign students from St. Petersburg universities walked throughout the city center. The police did not interfere with the unauthorized march, but asked its participants to disperse and did not allow demonstrators to approach Smolny. The students did not receive the required governor, but they listened to a monologue by the deputy head of the committee on science and higher education, Andrei Maksimov, who repeated that the murder was committed on domestic grounds. And he urgently asked the protesters to “go and carry out their training duties.” The students listened to him in silence and only became ingrained in the opinion that the city leadership did not want to know about the existence of interethnic hatred. While the rally was going on, the Council of Rectors met in Smolny for an emergency meeting. After it, it turned out that the head of the committee for external relations and tourism of the city administration, Alexander Prokhorenko, knows what the root of evil is. It turns out, according to him, about 20% of foreign students can afford to rent apartments. And so they “fall out of sight of the heads of universities and law enforcement agencies.” Now all foreigners will be required to report to the administration the address where they rent an apartment. True, how this will protect them from hooligans is unclear to the students themselves.
Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg prosecutor's office did not share the optimism of the leadership of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate. Senior Assistant Prosecutor of St. Petersburg Elena Ordynskaya said on Friday that it was premature to talk about a domestic motive for this crime. “The official position of the prosecutor’s office is that the murder of a Congolese citizen has not been solved; there is not a single suspect or detainee in the case. The prosecutor’s office is pursuing all versions, none of which can be called a priority.” Nevertheless, the police stand their ground and claim that the murdered man even carried on common business with criminal structures, so the cause of the tragedy was gang warfare. Dmitry ANDREEV, St. Petersburg |
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