Police did not come

A man was being beaten for 20 minutes during the fireworks in Minsk.

Besides bright and decorative  any national holiday has its dark side.

A TUT.BY correspondent became a witness of a showdown between two drunken young men, who visited the festivities near the Minsk City Hero Stella in Minsk on occasion of the Independence Day on July 3. A young man dressed in an orange T-shirt was trying to make his friend in a dark T-shirt go home. The men began a fight when the latter showed resistance. Due to an evident difference in a degree of alcoholic intoxication, the brawl soon turned into a brutal beating. The “orange” man was beating up and twisting arms of his “dark” friend.

Being a law-abiding man, the correspondent called police. The call was made at 10:54 pm. The fireworks began at 11:30 pm.

The correspondent started to film the fight only after his call to police, who arrived only in 22 minutes.

It was strange, because hundreds if not thousands of policemen were working on Winners Avenue only a few steps away from the incident. Every of them had a walkie-talkie and could receive information about the fight. However, none of them arrived to the scene, though it's only a five-minute walk from Winners Avenue.

Finally, police interfered with the incident, when the author stopped a bus with law-enforcement officers returning from the fireworks. They appeared to be more responsive than their colleagues. They detained both guys (the beaten one was already lying on the ground  hardly showing signs of life, but came around and even sobered up as soon as he saw men in uniform), called a patrol and handed over both fighters to policemen.

Thousands of people were passing by the beaten man during over 20 minutes, but no one made an attempt to save him.