Von James Ellingworth
KIEV, Ukraine — Instead of being one of the biggest sports events of the year in troubled Ukraine, Dynamo Kiev’s game against Chelsea in the Champions League turned into a public display of the country’s struggle to contain violent racists.
Echoing past decades of European football violence, at least eight people were brutally beaten at the game, including a 21-year-old African student.
While clashes between rival fans are comparatively common at Ukrainian league games, racist attacks on such a large scale are rare. This comes at a time when the country’s small black population is under pressure.
“Around the 25th minute, I started to take photographs on my phone,” the student told The Associated Press. “When I picked up the phone to look at the photographs I’d taken, I was hit. I fell down some stairs and felt almost as if I had lost consciousness.”
The Congolese student, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, spent almost a week in hospital with a head wound and injuries to his nose which required surgery. A keen football fan who attended games in his previous home in a provincial Ukrainian city, he now says he cannot face going to the stadium again.
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