As UCSJ has previously reported, on March 21, 2004 a Yemeni medical student in Gomyol, Belarus was seriously injured in the latest in a series of skinhead assaults on foreign students. The next day, around 40 foreign students, some armed with metal pipes, attacked three Slavic youths initially, and two more sometime later. As a result, 18 year old Aleksandr Poplevkin, whose membership in a skinhead group has been denied by local police, was beaten into a coma.

On March 27, 2004 the newspaper Sovetskaya Belarus reported that Mr. Poplevkin had died the day before. Whether or not he really was a skinhead, the paper writes, neo-Nazis might use his death as a pretext for some kind of retaliation. As a result, rumors are circulating among foreign students that a group of skinheads from Minsk are coming to the city to attack them, and some have begun withdrawing from the university to go back home. Police and the university administration have responded by patrolling the campus, using vans to drive foreign students to and from class, and warning them not to go out alone or at night. So far, no new attacks have been reported.

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