Foreigners afraid of going to study in Kharkiv because of attacks

The number of foreigners, who wish to study in Kharkiv, has decreased almost by a third due to hate crime attacks.

As the Radio Liberty reports, the Jordanian students and their parents are concerned over the slow police investigation into the circumstances of the mass beating in the campus. June 11, a group of young people in neck face masks ran along the Otakar Yarosh Street, beating and stabbing the passers-by and breaking car windows. The students from Jordan suffered most then. Many parents were frightened and refused to send their children to the universities in Kharkiv.

The investigators of the Kharkiv city Interior Ministry department currently suspect only one person, who is already under house arrest. The police say that the security camera videos are indistinct, as everything happened in the dark, so it is difficult to identify the attackers.

Human rights activist Yuri Chumak, who tracks the cases of xenophobia and hate crimes in Kharkiv, believes that the police could have prevented the mass beating, they knew about it, but turned the blind eye.

“The fact that the police do not see any signs of ethnic hate crimes in the mass beating, which occurred in the Otakar Yarosh Street, is genuine absurdity,” the human rights activist says.

The report, released by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, claims that the students from faraway countries are discouraged with the war in eastern Ukraine and the bloody attack of the far-right activists on foreign students in June.

“The number has decreased by about 35-40%. We see this on the received official invitations,” Dr. Issam Chahine, chief of the Zaynun private company, specializing in attracting young people from the Arab countries to studies in Kharkiv.

The Kharkiv regional department of education and science has not yet revealed the statistics for the foreign applicants as the admission campaign will last until December 1.

Several attacks on foreigners have recently taken place in Kharkiv. September 4, there was a fight between the African Americans and Ukrainian taxi driver, prevented by the National Guard officers. Lately, a Kharkiv resident eye witnessed how the police mistreated two black students. He intervened in the conflict and captured it on video.

Due to such situation in the city, it is offered to attract private security and install turnstiles in the city hostels. The management of the National Medical University has already installed the video surveillance system and plans to equip the guard desks with panic buttons and metal detectors.