Documentation on Racism and Discrimination of Louis Oseloka Abutu,
his family and his Struggle in the Nigeria Community against racism in
Ukraine
http://thecaravan.org/node/4445
"On one evening, towards the end of April 2014, when I came back to
my house after work I felt traumatized of the degrading humiliation and
intimidation which continued with the perpetrators of racist violence
and harassment in Ukraine, and most especially the possibility of my
being arrested by Ukraine Defense Intelligence Agency was very high. It
often came to my mind then, that the best thing I could do was to leave
the country after deserting from the Army as „Military Deserter.“ This
was actually the most critical decision for me that I had to escape the
racist persecution or death by the regime if I wanted to be sure to
survive and to seek for the protection of my life with my family in
Germany."
My name is Louis Oseloka Abutu. I was born in the city of Onitsha,
Anambra State, Nigeria. I left Nigeria in 1997 for Ukraine. In Ukraine I
joined the BILIE-Movement (Biafra Indigene Land in Exile) and became
their representative for Eastern Europe some years ago.
I have Ukrainian citizenship. I lived in Ukraine for 17 years. Since my
arrival in Ukraine I have been exposed to racism by ordinary people,
Mafia and state authorities like every other black person in Ukraine.
Racism against Blacks is a common problem in Ukraine
Every day racism and organised crimes and Mafia structures
In many occasions I was exposed to racism and threats by the
organised crime and Mafia. Nevertheless I always had to fight for my
life due to the pressure by the organized crimes of the racist Mafia,
the right-wing fascist and Nazis. There was never any concrete help by
the police or state authorities. As a foreigner and as black person my
position to challenge them was even weaker than that of others.
As it was impossible for me as a foreigner to get work in my
profession as an engineer I opened a shop for fashion accessories
products.
Almost every day people would just come and insult me in the street
in a racist way, for example asking if I have tail or asking me if I
lived with monkeys in my place or if I lived in trees. Or people would
just tell me that they would not like me and I should go to Africa and
eat banana. Things like that almost happened everyday publicly.
More dangerous turned out to be the threats by the organized crime.
One day I got involved in a threatening incident. Three young men suits
and sunglasses entered my shop to threaten me with racist offences and
with arms and to force me to accept their demand to pay a certain amount
of money in order to get a „godfather“ to protect me. The police
handled that case in very negligent and ineffective way which made me
suspicious of their connection to the people threatening me.
One night in August 2004 my first car, an Opel Vectra (model 1991)
was stolen by some young people from a filling station where I used to
leave it over night for washing. These boys, who were working at the
place, had been harassing me for a long time by calling me racist names
and demanding from me to sell my car to them. The car was found because
they crashed it in an accident. The car was beyond repair. The thieves
were only fined with a sentence less than the usual minimum for that
sort of crime. I never saw any compensation for my loss. There was no
serious attempt by the state of forcefully executing the payment money,
although I went to the court three times to demand for it.
One may say that this is just criminal and not racist. But I
perceived it as a racist act. The boys had called me racist names
before, they had bothered me frequently. They did not do it to others,
my car was not nicer than somebody elses. They insulted me as „monkey“
and asked me how I could leave Africa, come to Ukraine and drive their
cars and marry their women. So the message was very clear: A black
person is not entitled to have a car who gives you the right to take it.
One evening around 2010 I was attacked by some young people when I
came home together with Cynthia from her gymnastic class. Cynthia had to
witness all the racist assaults and dirty names they were giving me.
They threatened to kill me and started to beat me. Although my wife or
her mother called the police, they did not show up. I later had to go
there and make report but nothing happened.
The sufferings of my children
The most painful and dangerous thing was how the daily racism
affected my children. All my children witnessed traces of racism and
bullying in school but especially David, my youngest child in Ukraine
suffered a lot from it and until now he has not fully recovered.
Already as a young child he had to face a lot of isolation in the kindergarten.
When the children were playing they would make fun of him, teasing
him because of his black father. Children isolated him and would e.g.
take toys from him so that he couldn't play any more.
He always kept very quiet and was scared to talk to the children.
Anytime we got to the Kindergarten in the morning he started to cry. I
tried to convince him to go as I thought it is just a usual reluctancy
as children sometimes have, but his sufferings continued every day.
When I wanted to talk to the kindergarten teachers, they didn't take
it seriously. When the children were playing outside, the teachers would
even leave him inside the room. Once another child took his eyeglasses
from him, when he was playing alone, and threw it over the fence. When
David complained to the teachers they did not believe him but they
believed in the other boy.
After this event I took him out of this kindergarten and changed him
to a private kindergarten. This was in 2012. There he improved speaking
and started to express himself but with the age of six years it was
already late.
About five month later, the 31st December 2012, he had a complete
breakdown on a train trip to Kiev where we were going for the new year
celebration which almost lead to his death.
Because of Davids weakness we returned to Vinnitsa immediately and took
him to the hospital where they gave him glucose because he was so weak.
In the morning, he was already unconscious.
According to the advice of one nurse, he was taken to the emergency hall
of a clinic for diabetes by ambulance. There, they diagnosed it was
diabetes. In the interview we were asked if there was any diabetes in
the family, as there was not, the doctor saw it is a result of the
psychological stress he had suffered. David was in Koma for three days.
About half a year later there was another traumatizing incident when
David was playing outside our house, his grandmother was sitting nearby.
A young boy came along, started to call David „negro“ and threatened
to kill him. Then he broke a bottle on David's head, the grandmother
could not intervene. She had to call the ambulance, and David and his
mother went to the hospital where his wounds were stitched. This was on
28th May 2013
After the incident, David was very scared and did not want to go
outside any more. It was very difficult for him to associate with
people. He always stayed indoors. Even when he went out with me, he was
afraid. He wouldn't like to leave the house with me. Even here in
Germany during the first days, he wouldn't like to stay in the school
alone, his mother had to stay with him for the first days.
My socio-political engagements
Since the formation of the Nigerian Community my personality became exposed to various forms of racist threats and insecurity.
The association of Nigerians in Vinnitsa called „Nigerian Community“
was founded by me together with other fellow Nigerians in the year, 24.
November 2002, I was elected the president.
The initial focus was to have the possibility of uniting the children
with Nigerian origin because of the every day racism. As the
president of the Nigerian community I was also involved in many
different social activities. As time went on, the „Nigerian Community“
expanded beyond Vinnitsa and became more political. We developed a
regular forum to inform the community and the public about the victims
of racist attacks which were often ignored by the state authorities
without the pressure from our community.
We organized ourselves in solidarity with one another, that we can
overcome the societal and institutional obstacles to improve the
difficult situation of being an African refugee, student or migrant in
Ukraine as there also were people who did not have a residential stay or
who were coming from other countries like Russia and Eastern Europe.
All in all I was well known by the African community as well as the
Ukrainian authorities, and in my position I was quite influential.
The danger such a position can lead to could be seen in the case of
Patrice Nshimiyeumuremi (2000) from Ruanda who was the chairman of the
„African Union“ which existed long before I came. He was butchered in
the elevator of his own house. The political background of the crime
has not been detected until now. His death had put a lot of fear in the
members of the black community in Vinnitsa and also in me going to the
extend that I was afraid to come to my house every day. I would not
leave my car before phoning my wife to find out if I was safe and
before she put on the security light.
****
The attacks on my person became more and more concrete and dangerous
after I started getting active in the case of the murder of a young
Nigerian in a nightclub in Vinnitsa and other victims of racist attacks.
(Zank Adams) a student of Piragov Medical University and a member
of the Nigerian community died due to excessive bleeding in the 2010 or
2011 after he was beaten by the guards of the disco „H2o“. The owner of
the club was Vladimir Produc, a big Mafioso who controlled a lot of
businesses in Vinnitsa and had big influence on the authorities. He was
also a friend of the mayor then, Grossman who is now the head of the
parliament. Janukovic tried to make Produc become the mayor of Vinnitsa
which didn't work out.
As one year after the murder there was still no justice in this case
and the murderers were still moving around freely, the cousin of the
victim came to me as the head of the Nigerian community. I went to the
police together with him to address the issue. Finally, the case was
recalled back in the court of appeal. After the murderers were taken
into custody during the investigations, serious threats against my
person began and became more and more dangerous. They started with
verbal threats, continued with several attacks on my car, with physical
attacks on me, my wife, stalking of my children.
First one of their relatives began to threaten on the road me to
withdraw the statement that I had made to the police. If I didn't do so
they would get me wherever I am.
As I refused, they started to continue their threats, insults and harassments which continued until we left the Ukraine.
Once I came back to my house, insults and threats were written on my balcony, like [„prick“]
After that, there were serious attacks on my car.
When I came to garage one morning, it was open although I had locked
it the night before. The four spare tires with titan rims were stolen
and shit was sprayed everywhere. The whole place was smelling.
After that I sold the garage and left my car in surveilled car parks –
except when I had to travel the next day I parked the car nearby. One
of these days as I went out early to travel, I found that my car was
sprayed green all over.
Another morning the windscreen was broken.
We reported those cases to the police but nothing was done about it.
After some time I went to the office of the chief (Division Police
Officer DPO) of the station in my district in Kievskaya, to find out
from him about the development of my cases regarding the stealing of my
car spare tyres and the destruction of the windscreen, including the
racist violence attack against me by fascist. Surprisingly to me the
police chief (DPO) responded very unfriendly with threats and
harassment by telling me that" I should not forget that I am a foreigner
here and if I do not like what they do me I should go back to your
country. At that moment I felt I had lost everything – especially the
confidence in the authorities and the justice.
One day in late 2013, they met my wife outside the house who was
already pregnant in her seventh month and beat her up to the extend that
she had to go to the hospital. While she was in the hospital, Sintija
phoned her one evening and told her that she had been followed and
touched by a unknown man on the street who was saying something about
her father.
This immediate threat on one of the children was the sign for my wife
to leave the country to protect the lives of the children. After
signing a paper that she is leaving the hospital on her own
responsibility she left the hospital the same day. She packed David and
Sintija and arranged their escape from Ukraine.
I stayed because I didn't want to run away from the problem. I also
didn't want to give up my business and I wanted Veronika, our eldest
daughter, to finish her school and somebody had to monitor her.
Nevertheless, because of the threats I rented a small house for myself
and she stayed with the grandmother in the hope that she would not be
affected by the terror against me.
Military Deserteur
After my wife had already left I was forcefully recruited by the
paramilitary fascist group „Samaja aboronaja“ („self defence“) which is
now part of the Ukrainian army. When I later realized that they were
recruiting for the war in Slavjansk in Eastern Ukraine, I became very
scared. Due to my earlier racist experiences this was another serious
threat for me as a black man and father of three kids and a husband to a
pregnant wife. I was especially worried about my 15 year old daughter
Veronika who, if anything would have happened to me, would have been
alone as an under aged black child in Ukraine. Under these
circumstances the insecurity of my life became more and more unbearable
for me.
On one evening, towards the end of April 2014, when I came back to my
house after work I felt traumatized of the degrading humiliation and
intimidation which continued with the perpetrators of racist violence
and harassment in Ukraine, and most especially the possibility of my
being arrested by Ukraine Defense Intelligence Agency was very high. It
often came to my mind then, that the best thing I could do was to leave
the country after deserting from the Army as „Military Deserter.“ This
was actually the most critical decision for me that I had to escape the
racist persecution or death by the regime if I wanted to be sure to
survive and to seek for the protection of my life with my family in
Germany.
END
This was actually the most critical decision for me that I had to escape
the racist persecution or death by the regime if I wanted to be sure to
survive and to seek for the protection of my life with my family in
Germany." LOUIS OSELOKA ABUTU Video: https://vimeo.com/161639378
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