Young Congolese refugee murdered in Kyiv
According to a Kyiv newspaper, on Sunday 27 January an 18-year-old Congolese national was murdered in the Shevchenkivsky district not far from the flat which he shared with three other people from African countries.
Volodymyr Polishchuk from the Kyiv Police reports that the young man was found with knife wounds on Salyutna St. He died in hospital. He had been stabbed 15 times on the head, chest and back. The investigation team is presently considering three main possibilities: a racially-motivated attack; robbery; domestic conflict. They do not exclude “problems of a legal nature”.
The young man had been in Kyiv for around a year and received official refugee status in December 2007. Mr Polishchuk added that he was of respectable appearance, however was neither working nor studying, and lived off the assistance he received from the UNHCR.
Attacks on people of other nationalities have become more frequent with this being the third incident this year. On 16 January the police caught two students who had beaten up a 23-year-old Cote dIvoire national, and as reported here, prior to this there was an assault on a black member of the “Kyiv” basketball team. Marcus Faison. Mr Faisan did not make an official approach to the police and nobody was caught.
http://human-rights.unian.net/ukr/detail/187088
We are posting information about this terrible killing in case it was racially motivated however it would be irresponsible to assume that it was until the investigation is over. We will endeavour to report on all developments.