Voronezh Mayor: “Students have been killed and will be killed”
VORONEZH: Over 300 foreign students came to a spontaneous demonstration in downtown, begging the locals to stop killing them. The reason for the protest was the murder of an 18 year old student from Peru on October 9, 2005.
That day Anhelis Urtado Enrike with his friend, also from Peru, and their friend from Spain and two Russian students were walking in one of the city's parks. Out of nowhere came 15-20 young men armed with sticks, metal bars, chains and knives. They severely injured the Spanish and Peruvian students, and killed Anhelis; two Russian students, who were with the foreigners, got away with a few scars. There was no reason for the attack, it was executed just for the fun of it, as commented upon by the local police officials. The kids who attacked the students were not skin-heads, or known gang members, they were just apparently normal Russian young people, having some fun at a city park. This is just another case of frequent attacks on foreigners, or people who just look different.
Today at 1 p.m. foreign students in Voronezh gathered by the city University and started marching towards the center of the city. They didn't request a permit to conduct their protest, but law-enforcement agencies didn't object, so the demonstration continued. Their posters read: "Stop Killing Us", "Let Us Live" and "We Want to Live".
A few hours into the protest, city officials started showing up, trying to calm down the students. First came Yuri Bykov, city police seniority. He tried to calm the students down by saying that "We are working hard, if we were not working you would have felt it!" That did not calm down anyone, so another official came out, saying that some of the perpetrators had been arrested and questioned.
To give students the required attention, the mayor himself came in to the square, by the Lenin statue, and said: "Students have been killed and will be killed. We are trying hard, but there isn't much we can do about it. Russians also get killed." Boris Skrynnikov, the mayor of Voronezh, was honest in saying these words, and students also understood it, they figured out that there is nothing left to do downtown, and headed back to the university.
At the university, the head of a local prosecutors office said that they will find the thugs, and that was the end of the battle for justice and safety of international students. When the students went home, prosecutors office made an official statement - in fact, no one had been arrested or questioned.
There are 1,200 international students studying in Voronezh.
