Russian-speaking Israelis protest against police brutality

On the square, in front of the building of Ashkelon municipality, a protest against police brutality took place. It was initiated by residents of Ashkelon after the incident, during which 26-year-old Margarita Shulman was injured.

About 200 representatives of the Russian-speaking community took part in the action. Among them were the deputies of the Knesset Ksenia Svetlova and Sofa Landver, as well as Margarita Schulman herself.

Knesset deputy Ksenia Svetlova, in an interview with a journalist NEWSru.co.il, noted that the action held today must be treated as the first step in the fight against police brutality.

“The police cannot perform the function of the judicial system and, at their own discretion, determine the punishment for a detained citizen,” says the deputy.

Svetlova also notes that the problem of police violence is a nationwide one in Israel, and there is no sector that has not suffered from the actions of the police. In this case, first of all, the weak and less protected sections of the population, in particular repatriates, suffer. She emphasizes that women are often victims of “police brutality.”

Ksenia Svetlova is convinced that in a legal state no meeting with a police officer, regardless of the degree of guilt of a citizen, should end as Margarita Shulman ended.

As previously reported, on the evening of May 28, at the entrance to Ashkelon, police stopped a car in which a Russian-speaking couple was sitting, smashed windows in the car, explaining that there were drugs in the car that were not found during the search.

Margaret Schulman and Andrei Basin, who were in the car, told the editorial staff of NEWSru.co.il that people in civilian clothes smashed a car window with hammers, beat them themselves and only after that announced that they were working in the police. After the incident, Shulman required medical assistance, as she had a broken head.

In early May, people from Ethiopia police officers threw stones, bottles and firecrackers, and also burned garbage cans in the city center. The police car was turned over. So the protesters demonstrated their dissatisfaction with the policemen who beat the IDF soldier.