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Attack In Shopping Center In Minsk: Fatality Of Incident

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Attack In Shopping Center In Minsk: Fatality Of Incident
PHOTO: TASS

Why was the armed criminal stopped by the visitors, not by the security and the police?

The incident in the shopping center in Minsk is scary. The fact, that a woman died and some people were wounded, grieves to the very heart. We can only admire the people, who stopped and detained the perpetrator, preventing new victims. Not everyone would realize at the supreme moment, that he must risk his live and fight back.

No one is impervious to such tragedies. These terrible crimes can happen anywhere. However, the fatality of the incident does not exempt from the need to figure out, what happened at the shopping center “Europe” in Minsk on October 8.

And there is something to think about, because there are a lot of questions:

– How did the offender, armed with a chainsaw and an ax, manage to roam the floors of the shopping center for 11 solid minutes?

– Why did sole traders and customers, not the police or security, stop him after this time?

– Why are guards not allowed to carry weapons in Belarus, even traumatic or gas ones? How can they protect people with bare hands?

– What are the selection criteria and the level of training of guards in such centers?

– Why do shop assistants have no alarm buttons in shopping centers’ pavilions? How are they supposed to inform about the dangers in the case of a robbery?

– Many a one have turned attention, that the police was not called for 6 solid minutes. Why? Of course, this can be attributed to the panic and shock. But, for example, dialing 911, if any danger, is right-on the reflex in the USA. We take the police as more like a threat, rather than protection, at the back of mind, and we wouldn’t hurry to call it.

– On this occasion, I want to remind you that, according to statistics, there are almost 1500 employees of law enforcement bodies per 100 thousand people in Belarus, which is 7 times more than it was in the USSR. Add to that the eight special services. At the same time, according to police colonel Aleh Alkayeu, only 6 (!) percent of the Belarusian law-enforcement agencies’ staff are involved in detection of crimes. Are 94 percent busy with prevention?

– Why do riot police officers, who are very numerous in Minsk streets, check the backpacks of young people with Pahonia badges in search of white-red-white flags, but passed by a strange young man in ridiculous orange clothing, ski goggles and a huge carrying case?

– Yesterday in a Homel shopping center security guards detained oppositionists, who were handing out the registered newspaper Narodnaya Volia. That is, they had been instructions to detain independent press distributers, but had forgotten to instruct how to act in case of an attack or act of terrorism?

– Finally, where is the guarantee that tomorrow another “well-dressed” maniac would not go to another shopping mall?

Many people estimate the moral and psychological state of the Belarusians as a state of quiet anger. Citizens are deprived of initiative, there is only total control and dictate on the part of the authorities. At that the economic situation worsens, people are in constant tension. As to alcoholism, the number of suicides and psychoses, Belarusians are the leaders in Europe.

Natallia Radzina, editor in chief of charter97.org

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