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Incidents, Russia

Fight. Photo from web site news.nur.kz

Racism in children's camp leads up to tragedy

It was racism of clear water. On the night of July 24, a Russian mob beat Chechen children at Pioneer Camp ‘Don’. The incident occurred in the Krasnodar Territory (Russian Federation), and later a wave of outrage swept across Russia ...
  
About 400 local residents assaulted the campers. Led by the camp director and his two sons, the angry mob maimed 7 children, and their 60-year-old Chechen mentor came in for a lot of trouble, too. The injured were hospitalized with craniocerebral injuries and limb fractures.
  
Currently, two versions of such mass slaughter are under consideration. According to one of them, on the evening of 24 July, the deputy director of the camp, Boris Usoltsev being not sober, went up to three teenage campers and began beating them up. Hatred of the Chechen Republic natives, as the local community says, appeared in the deputy director many years ago. In the past, he was a military contractor in Chechnya during the two campaigns. "I crushed you in Chechnya, and will crush you here", with these words he was thrashing the boys.
  
Later, the father of the fight initiator, the camp director Michael Usoltsev tried to get his son off the hook. He asked the witnesses of the event not to wash dirty linen in public. Everybody agreed.
  
However, a few hours later, rumors of the next impending attack spread in the camp. The Chechen schoolchildren were in danger again ... The youth leaders began to hide around 300 children from the Republic who were in the camp at the time. The employees from Rostov, Omsk and Chuvashia put the children on the floor and covered them with blankets. But at that moment no one even could even imagine what kind of fight was in the offing ...
  
It was getting dark in the street, the night was setting in, and the youth leaders and counselors were on duty at the camp buildings. Suddenly there were the bandits: the director with the second son and 300-400 local residents. The arriving crowd rushed into the building, where there were children from the junior sport team of Chechnya. It is this group and their coaches who had to withstand the attack of people going berserk.
  
Calling the police did not make sense. The law enforcers were at the site of the mass fight, but did not take any measures to prevent the disorder. According to the teachers, the police only watched the row.
  
The fight continued from 11 pm to 2 am. Over this period, the camp turned into a "post-war Stalingrad": broken glass, broken boards with protruding nails. Looked like a "battle" painting  in the present tense.
  
The second version of the fight is another story... On the evening of 24 July, when patrolling the camp buildings, Boris Usoltsev heard male voices in the girls’ bedroom. Having opened the door, he saw three 15-16-year-old youths beating a 14-year-old girl, who had come from Rostov. Children say they were harassing her, calling her names, and she slapped one of the offenders in the face. Then she immediately received a blow in her face. At that moment, Usoltsev came in. Seeing the chaos, the deputy director wanted to protect the girl, but received a firm request to go to hell. Thus, word for word, the row began, and they started to fight.
  
The counselors said later: "They broke his (Usoltsev’s) leg with a bat, broke his nose, and then started to jump over his body. One of the Chechen counselors literally lay down on Usoltsev, shielding him with his body and shouting:" What are you doing? You are going to kill him!" We did not see that, we only know that after the conflict the first batch of local residents, about 50 men, came to the camp, but then, when things took a different turn, the second party arrived – this time 150-200 men". That's how the brawl headed for a face-off.
  
But whatever the reasons, no matter who was to blame for the incident, we have to admit the facts of outrageous relationships with children and disrespectful treatment of adults.

By Lyubov Yu. Moskvina, BCM.ru staff writer
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