When 16-year-old David Uzu got on a metro train at Maidan Nezalezhnosti in the early evening on Aug. 19, he was, like millions of other Ukrainians who use the underground train every day, expecting an uneventful trip home.
But Uzu, whose father is Nigerian, was targeted that day by a group of 20 to 30 skinheads, who started to follow him, shout racial slurs and eventually assaulted him.
Unfortunately, the attack on Uzu is not an isolated incident.
Although few racially motivated crimes are reported to the police, non-governmental organizations say the problem is far worse than the reporting statistics would indicate. Moreover, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance has criticized the Ukrainian police for failing to identify violent racist attacks for what they are.
Uzu’s attackers followed him onto the train. Fellow passengers did nothing as the skinheads taunted and insulted Uzu during the trip. Hoping to escape the skinheads’ harassment, Uzu got off at an earlier stop, Pozniaky station, but 10 of them followed him off the train. On the platform, they started to push him, and then one of them threw a punch, hitting Ouzou on the face.
Only after that did a bystander intervene to defend him, and the skinheads fled. Shocked, but not badly injured, Uzu tried to report the attack to the station’s police, but failed to find any. After that he went home and contacted the police from there.
With his mother Galina, Uzu returned to the scene of the attack, only to hear from station staff that no security camera had been pointing at the spot where he was attacked. A subsequent police investigation has made little progress, leaving him and his mother frustrated.
Galina, who moved to the capital with her son from Donetsk as conflict broke out in the east of the country last year, told the Kyiv Post that they were speaking out to prevent these kinds of attacks from happening.
“We love Ukraine – it’s our country,” Galina said. We’re Ukrainian citizens and it’s shameful for Ukraine that this kind of thing can happen.”
Yuriy Kamara of the African Council of Ukraine told the Kyiv Post that police crime statistics might not accurately reflect the situation with racist hate crime in Ukraine.
“The main issue with the statistics is that it’s hard to determine when an attack was racially motivated,” Kamara.
To try to get a more accurate picture of the problem, the Diversity Initiative, a network of non-governmental and international organizations that includes the United Nations Refugee Agency, gathers information on hate crimes in Ukraine.
According to them, 18 people were victims of violent xenophobic attacks in both 2013 and 2014. This year is just as bad, with 11 people having been attacked so far. Most of the victims were foreigners from Africa and the Middle East, and Ukrainians with a multicultural background.
Still, the situation is better than it was just a few years ago. In the peak year of 2007, the National Minority Rights Monitoring Group reported a total of 88 victims of hate crime, six of whom were murdered.
All the same, racial discrimination and prejudice remain a problem in modern Ukraine, according to Kamara.
It’s difficult to talk about these issues just now, because the government is afraid that these events will be used by Russia and others to label Ukraine as fascist.
Kamara said the EuroMaidan Revolution must only be exclusive to Independence Square, “but everywhere, especially in people’s minds.”
According to Kamara, the roots of xenophobia in Ukraine reach back into Soviet times: “Ukraine was a very closed society, and the people did not have the same opportunities as, say, the French or the British to experience and come in touch with foreign cultures.”
But Kamara also emphasized that Ukraine is a country with a multi-ethnic society and history: “Never mind my skin color, or the skin color of my children and grandchildren – what really matters is culture. Ukraine is constantly becoming ethnically diverse and the priority should be the preservation of Ukrainian culture.”
Kyiv Post writer Antti Rauhala can be reached at [email protected].
Two expats’ experiences of racism in Ukraine
Sam Guydon, a 26-year-old American traveler from Miami, arrived in Ukraine in mid-July, interviewed on Facebook:
“Ironically, I only had a slight problem while I was Kyiv. But it was nothing major. A man was drunk and started yelling what I assumed were obscenities towards me in a restaurant. But I never felt physically threatened. I asked the waitress what he said, and it was clear he hadn’t taken a liking towards me because I was black.”
Alfonsine Williams, living in Kyiv, interviewed on Facebook:
“My experience in Kyiv has been quite unique. I came during the Maidan revolution and decided to stay, and I have a deep affection and love for Ukraine and its people. With that being said, I have been assaulted in the metro – or at least they attempted to, I have been greeted with Nazi salutes on my way home, and at night clubs even.
I’ve also had the ‘kouna matata’ (a Swahili phrase that can be derogatory) taunt thrown at me as well, and have felt very uncomfortable at times in many areas out of the center of Kyiv.
I have lived in various countries apart from my own (I’m from Washington, D.C) and there is indeed racism in every country. The worst part about Kyiv, (which is a capital city and in my opinion should be held to a different standard as opposed to say rural areas that are less diverse in general) is the lack of outrage that you would get in other capital cities, and the utter sense of indifference that most seem to have here when it comes to racism and xenophobia in general.
Ukraine wants to be seen as a European country with just laws and democratic views, but it is my belief that democracy is all to do with the advancement of a country’s majority as a whole, while at the same time protecting the rights of minorities. Until this happens in Ukraine, its people – not just foreigners – will continue to suffer.”
