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Posted on: 21st March 2005
On March 16, 2005 a group of 20-30 nazi-skinheads, presumably with the support of policemen in civilian clothes, attacked young people who were returning after a rock concert that took place in the Minsk club “Leo”.
As a result of the conflict three visitors of the concert were
hospitalized: two of them received knife wounds, the third sustained
craniocerebral injury. A 15-year-old boy, who received a knife stab in
his back, was taken to the Children’s Surgery Center.
On March 16 there was a large rock event in the club “Leo”. Among the
numerous audience there were journalists from major TV-channels and
the press of Belarus (the First Musical Channel, the newspaper
“Komsomolskaya Pravda v Belorussii”, etc.)
Hour and a half before the end of the concert a man in civilian
clothes came up to the organizer of the event, introduced himself as a
policeman and warned about a group of aggressive nazi-skinheads being
by the club. Also he advised the visitors to not get out of the club.
After it he walked around the club and left it. The concert
successfully continued and ended about 21:30 when the first visitors
started to go away. When people got out to the front steps, at a
distance of 15 meters they noticed a group of 20-30 nazi-skinheads
armed with bludgeons, reinforcement, and, as it turned out later,
knives. The nazis first tried to attack a company of 5-8 girls and
boys going home but the young people managed to hide in the club
having run in the lobby. Guards immediately blocked entrance to the
building. By that time alarmed visitors had gathered in the lobby and
simultaneously poured into the street where they were repeatedly
attacked by the nazis and had to defend themselves. During the fight
Maksim Sh. of 15 years received a knife stab in his back; Artiom K.
was badly wounded with two knife stabs in his liver. The third person
was hospitalized with head injury. Some more people sustained minor
injuries. After the assault the nazis, who hadn’t expected to meet
with an adequate rebuff, ran away.
The injured were carried into the building, and people called in an
ambulance rendering concurrently medical care by their own strength.
Later the young people noticed a group of nazi-skinheads to all
appearance on the other side of Skoryna Ave. (near the club).
According to some witnesses there was a man with a video-camera among
them. The group of these people was coming with confidence across the
avenue taking out weapon in an emphatic manner. A part of the concert
visitors following the instinct of self-preservation tried to hide in
the club making a throng by the entrance. At this moment the group of
the armed people fired gas weapon. There were at least two shots. The
club’s premise, especially the lobby where the injured people were,
was filled up with gas.
As it turned out these people were policemen in civilian clothes (they
showed their documents, and besides some of them were seen later in
the night in the Pervomayskii Department of Inner Affairs (one of the
city’s police departments), and they held police portable radio
transmitters), and among them there was a well-known Minsk neo-nazi
and football hooligan Aleksandr “Footballer” Shcherbich, who was
pointing a finger at some people among the concert visitors. The
policemen in civilian clothes tried to use force to the pointed
people, but the crowd became indignant and the pointed guys were left
alone by the police.
Some time later the man, who warned the organizers about the possible
assault of the nazis, was seen again in the club and this time he wore
“strange” clothes - nazi-skinheads wore the clothes like that.
By that time several police cars drove up to the club, most likely
they had been called by the club’s administration with an “alarm
button”. And only in 10 minutes after the police’s arrival the
ambulance appeared – it took them 40 minutes to come after the call!
The police conducted themselves very easy, calmly and didn’t show any
surprise at all the happened things. The policemen in civilian
clothes, who had just fired at the crowd, were evenly speaking to the
arrived troops.
At night the two injured guys were operated on and at the present
moment they are in satisfactory condition.
To our knowledge right now 7 nazi-skinheads are detained for
participation in the attack. The Main Department of Internal Affairs
of Minsk City Executive Committee reports about several detained
persons and opening of the criminal case for hooliganism. The words
“fascist”, “skinhead”, etc. don’t appear in the case. Also it mentions
that among the assaulters there were nazis not only from Minsk but
from other Belarusian cities as well that allows to draw a conclusion
that the action was planned.
We as participants and witnesses of the events have a range of natural
questions:
- why didn’t the police prevent the conflict, although they had
information about the possibility of attack?
- how to explain the shooting with gas weapon at the concert visitors,
who were not aggressors in the conflict?
- what was the well-known neo-nazi doing among the policemen in
civilian clothes and why they grabbed people pointed by him?
- why did it take so long police troops and ambulance to come to the
place of occurrence?
- wasn’t it the provocation of the government and what it had as its
object?