A Black woman’s move to Russia to try to flee racism in the U.S. was completely marred by a violent, racist attack that she says was committed by her white neighbors.
Francine Villa was featured in the 2020 documentary “Black in the USSR,” which aired on the Russian State Media channel, RT.
She said she didn’t just move to Russia on a whim — she has familial ties there.
Her great-grandfather moved from Virginia to work as an agriculturist in the country in the 1930s, and her family has lived there ever since.
She was born there, but at a young age, her mother moved her to the United States.
After spending most of her life in America, she said her life changed when she experienced a traumatizing encounter with police after approaching them for help, only for them to dismiss her plea and assault her.
She said the incident prompted her decision to move back to her home country, believing that she could escape the discrimination in the States and start anew.
After a year of living in Moscow, she initially celebrated her relocation, telling RT, “I feel free living in Russia, because in Russia, no matter what time it is, I can walk outside and I’m safe.”
But five years later, Villa’s dream turned on its head.
She took to Instagram, still bloodied from an assault, saying her neighbors attacked her and called her racial slurs while she was with her 2-year-old child.
She interlaced her video with footage from the attack, showing the neighbors as they verbally accosted her.
Her two alleged assailants, a white man and woman, reportedly blocked the entrance to her apartment, threatened to toss out her belongings, and cut off electricity to the unit. Villa said they even threw her baby’s stroller down the steps.
She overlaid text onto the video that said that she and her toddler both have bruises.
Villa said that she’s taken the matter to the police, who have done nothing so far to address it, according to the New York Post.
Her videos drew hundreds of thousands of views online. Many viewers sympathized with Villa and demanded justice for the brutalized mother.
“We cannot be silent when a mother and her baby suffer because of intolerance,” one Russian viewer wrote. “Russia is a multinational country. Protecting citizens is the state’s duty.”
“It’s monstrous. If the legal authorities don’t do anything, many people will be deeply disappointed,” an Instagram user commented.
Several other viewers questioned Villa’s decision to move to Russia, noting the irony of trying to escape racism and discrimination in one majority-white country only to encounter it in another.
“If you find one predominantly white country to be racist, then why move to another that’s even more solidly white? And I’d expect an American of any race to not to be treated all that well in Russia,” one X user commented.
