‘Like captured Germans in 1944’: Moscow cops convoy column of illegal immigrants

Citizens of the Moscow suburb of Reutov have witnessed a previously-unseen procession of illegal aliens arrested by police at a local market. There were so many arrested that police had to form them into a column resembling POWs during WWII.

Police in Reutov suppressed a looming conflict at a local
wholesale and retail market on May 27, arresting over a hundred
of men armed with knives, metal rods and traumatic pistols, ready
to set upon each other as a result of some kind of a conflict of
interest between merchants. Many of the arrested turned out to be
living and working in Russia illegally.

Because the number of detainees exceeded the capacity of local
police prison trucks, officers had to convoy them to the police
station on foot, demonstrating outstanding escort guard skills.

Once an amateur video of the incident made it on to the web, it
exploded a bombshell in the Russian segment of the internet.

Young though Russian internet users might be, the likening of the
illegal aliens to German POWs being escorted during WWII made it
into Top-30 of the Russian Twitter trends.

“Prisoner guest workers in Moscow’s Reutov are being convoyed,
hands up, faces frightened. This reminds me of German war
prisoners,” wrote blogger dakarmos on LiveJournal.

The most renowned event of war prisoners marching through the
Soviet capital was the historic  ‘Parade of Losers’ (Big
Waltz March), that took place in Moscow on July  17, 1944,
when 57,000 German POWs marched through central Moscow.

Nearly 70 years ago, that was how the Soviet government showed
the citizens of the capital and foreign diplomats residing in
Moscow that the Red Army was winning the war. The march of German
POWs left an indelible impression in the memory of
contemporaries.

Once the economic situation in Russia began to markedly improve
in the 2000s, citizens of neighboring countries began looking for
a better life in Russia.

Less than a week before the incident in Reutov, Moscow police
conducted an ‘Illegal Alien-2013’ operation, arresting over 600
illegals. But this is only a drop in the ocean, as the Federal
Migration Service believes that as many as 3 million illegal
immigrants are currently residing in Russia.

On May 22 Moscow police reported that over the four first months
of the 2013 the number of crimes committed by illegal migrants
has grown up by 42 per cent, whereas the hard crimes committed by
migrants has grown by 72 per cent.

“Just imagine: if not for  those migrant crime stats,
Moscow would have the lowest crime rate in whole Russia,”
commented Moscow Police Chief Anatoly Yakunin.

In the meantime Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has
warned that  the uncontrollable flow of migrants might
threaten national security as the illegal aliens might have not
only criminal, but terrorist pasts.

“We have discovered that certain forces within the illegal
migration actually conduct subversive and intelligence activities
against the Russian Federation,” stressed FSB Service One
deputy head Aleksandr Roschupkin, speaking at parliamentary
hearings in the upper house, the Federation Council.

This article originally appeared on: RT