Skinheads dungeons

Vladimir KOCHERGIN, Chief of Staff of the Government of the Republic of Tuva:

The case of the beating of Sayana Mongush, a journalist, human rights activist and press secretary of the Tuvan government, in the St. Petersburg subway has still not earned the attention of St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko. The head of the cultural capital of Russia and a multinational city (as the mayor herself likes to repeat) has not yet taken control of the investigation of this crime.
And in their hometown of Kyzyl, Tuvan officials even threatened Sayana:
- Don't make noise! Don't incite ethnic hatred! You, as a civil servant, should generally hide such unfavorable facts...


We don't have fascism
Meanwhile, “adverse facts” have already formed the basis of a criminal case under Art. 282 part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Incitement of national, racial or religious hatred with the use of violence,” which was nevertheless initiated by the City Prosecutor’s Office on December 4.
Let us remind you that Sayana Mongush, returning from a St. Petersburg Buddhist temple, was attacked at about two o’clock in the afternoon on December 1 in a train carriage on the blue (Moscow-Petrograd) metro line. On the stretch between the Chernaya Rechka and Prospekt Prosveshcheniya stations, Sayana was attacked by young people (a group of 8–10 people, 14–18 years old), dressed as skinheads. The teenagers kicked the woman - wearing large black boots with metal tips - on her head, face, arms and legs. They continued until the man sitting next to her stood up for the journalist, and she herself managed to slip out and hide behind the back of a random fellow traveler.
The neo-Nazi attack was filmed on a mobile phone by one of the eyewitnesses of the incident - a passenger in the same carriage. Law enforcement agencies are currently looking for him, as well as the person who stood up for Sayana. The man diverted the blow to himself, which, as Mongush says, saved her life.
As Sayana says, the criminals immediately switched to her intercessor. With the same frenzy, they began to beat this man, especially since - judging by his appearance - he was also of “non-Slavic origin.” The further fate of the man with the “wrong” face is still unknown.
Having reached the Prospekt Prosveshcheniya station, Sayana Mongush “shared her impressions” with the metro police. The underground law enforcement officers did not believe her: “We don’t have fascism.”

Knocked out case
“The police department at the metro station refused to accept a statement from a Tuvan journalist,” says St. Petersburg human rights activist Ruslan Linkov. — The ground-based internal affairs bodies (represented by the press secretary of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region Vyacheslav Stepchenko) did not hesitate to state on December 3 that “the victim resident of Tuva did not contact the police.”
However, Sayana definitely went to the emergency room. From the hospital, where the victim was diagnosed with multiple hematomas and a concussion, the Central Internal Affairs Directorate received a telephone message. Therefore, on the fourth day, law enforcement agencies admitted that there was a fact and opened a case.
It must be admitted that this happened largely only thanks to the loud resonance of the incident, the active intervention of human rights activists, harsh statements from the press, the status of Ms. Mongush (an expert at the Information Policy Foundation, a member of the Russian Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, a member of the Union of Journalists of Russia, a two-time winner of the competition for the Academician Sakharov Prize “Journalism as an Act”) and her place of work (the government of Tuva).
The head of the Republic of Tuva, Sholban Kara-ool, asked Valentina Matvienko a week ago to take personal control of the case of the beating of Sayana Mongush in the St. Petersburg metro. On Thursday, December 6, a letter of this content was sent to Smolny addressed to the governor. But on December 12, the Smolny office told Novaya that “they had not received any letter from Tuva.” And until the official delivery of the envelope, Valentin Matvienko apparently does not respond to verbal requests.

Right to remain silent
However, not all officials in Tuva are sympathetic to the incident with the journalist.
“Last year in Moscow, the same young fascists beat a Tuvan student to death,” Sayana Mongush said in a telephone interview with a Novaya correspondent on December 12. “When the coffin with her body was brought to Kyzyl, the relatives were immediately told to keep quiet, not stir up a scandal, and explain to everyone that the girl was not killed - it was just an accident. The same thing is happening to me now.
“I tried to go through the doctors in Kyzyl - they demanded a referral from an investigator from St. Petersburg,” the victim is perplexed. — At work (not the head of the republic, of course, but officials at a lower level) they warned me to keep silent about what happened: “How can you? You work for the government!..” I was banned from speaking on our radio and giving interviews to local newspapers. I have the impression that publicity about this case is not in anyone’s interests. What if I had been killed in that carriage? - Sayana asks. “Would everyone also say out loud that she slipped, fell, hit her head and died?..

Tortured consequence
“I’m lucky to be alive,” says Sayana Mongush, and maybe she’s not so far from the truth.
In the evening of the same day - December 1 - from approximately 17 to 22 hours, after beating a Tuvan journalist in the metro, in the Primorsky district of St. Petersburg (not far from the Chernaya Rechka station), three citizens of the former Soviet republics were attacked by a group of skinhead-looking young men. As a result, one person (a 20-year-old native of Uzbekistan) died from multiple stab wounds, and two more (a 49-year-old Jew and a 59-year-old Moldovan) were admitted to intensive care in serious condition.
The coincidence in time (the crimes occurred one after another) and place (proximity to the Chernaya Rechka - Prospekt Prosveshcheniya section of the city metro station) immediately suggested that the criminals who attacked the Tuvan journalist and people from neighboring countries could have been the same people. On the same night, a team of police officers was sent to the Primorsky district. As it became known from sources in law enforcement agencies, operatives detained five young people on suspicion of committing attacks on foreign citizens.
“It is possible that all three crimes are related,” Sergei Kapitonov, senior assistant to the head of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee at the St. Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office, confirmed in an interview with Novaya’s correspondent. “Today there is an assumption that persons suspected of murder and infliction of grievous bodily harm could have participated in the attack on Sayana Mongush. The version is being worked on. Detainees are being checked for involvement. But no one has been charged yet.

Contact numbers for eyewitnesses of the attack on Sayana Mongush on December 1, 2007: 331-71-82.

Nina PETLYANOVA

Direct speech

- For us this is nonsense. 80% of our population are indigenous Tuvans. There are no skinheads in Tuva and by definition there cannot be. Is it possible to imagine skinheads, for example, in Chechnya? How long will they live there after they appear on the city streets? Here we have a republic, where mainly the indigenous population lives. But in our republic there have never been conflicts between Russians and Tuvans.

Dina OYUN, media adviser to the Prime Minister of Tuva:
— Such facts cause indignation in the republic. The government of Tuva hopes that the law enforcement agencies of St. Petersburg will solve this crime and the perpetrators will be punished.

Lyudmila NARUSOVA, representative of the Republic of Tuva in the Federation Council of the Russian Federation:
— Last week, I sent an official request regarding the case of Sayana Mongush to the head of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, Vladislav Piotrovsky. I didn't take a side position. I am trying to defend the interests of Sayana both in St. Petersburg and in Tuva.

Dmitry KIRILLOV, coordinator of the St. Petersburg branch of DPNI:
“I studied this matter on my own. The very fact of the attack raises serious doubts. It is possible that human rights activists are simply promoting the situation in St. Petersburg. Hysteria around the Nazi theme is constant. The topic of an attack on a Tuvan woman was raised by human rights activist Ruslan Linkov. Some time ago he already reported that skinheads killed a Jewish youth. And later it turned out that the young man was killed out of jealousy. I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar happens this time.