|
Euroasian Jewish News
Kyiv Murder: No Grounds For Anti-Semitism Suspicions
09.05.2010 On the 9th of May, a number of Internet news portals, quoting the CHABAD website, reported an anti-Semitic murder in Kyiv. The reports stated that a 25-year-old former Yeshiva student Aryeh Leib Misinzov had “in all likelihood” been abducted by neo-Nazis on Hitler’s birthday, tortured and murdered, and subsequently dismembered. It was also reported that “the leader of a neo-Nazi gang” had been arrested in connection with this crime.
According to information obtained by the editorial board of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress website, eajc.org, from the Prosecutor’s office, the SSU (Security Service of Ukraine) and the police, as well as staff of the Jewish public centre and Director of the Yeshiva, there was indeed a murder, however, nothing suggests that the crime was of an anti-Semitic nature.
The murder took place around a week ago (i.e. around 2 weeks after Hitler’s birthday on 20 April) in a Kyiv district. The body was not dismembered, as the Internet reports claimed. The victim was not dressed in traditional religious clothing and had no other features to identify him as a religious Jew – no head attire, no symbols nor any special haircut. There is no confirmation at the moment of the murdered having been abducted before the murder, nor of the arrest of neo-Nazi suspects.
Thus, at present there is no information which would make it possible to assert either that the murdered was a neo-Nazi victim, or that there was an anti-Semitic motive. The police are presently investigating the crime, with the main version being a criminal motive.
Since the story is already gaining wide publicity (for example, it has already been commented by Knesset Deputies), the eajc.com editorial board calls to not repeat unverified information and to be extremely careful when covering Ukrainian – Jewish relations in connection with the crime. Anti-Semitism in Ukraine has been, contrarily to the reports in some media outlets of a “sharp increase in the number of acts of anti-Semitism in recent months,” recently showing a reduction in the number of different types of manifestations. Meanwhile the latest crime is already being discussed in the context of cancelling the visa-free regime between Ukraine and Israel, and is becoming overgrown with false details, each more improbable than the next. The editorial board of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress website asks the media to use only authenticated information.
|
|
