Meskhetian Turks are on the brink of expultion

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Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 13:06:14 +0300 (EEST)
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Subject: Meskhetian Turks are on the brink of expultion

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Original sender: Alexander Ossipov <[email protected]>

Meskhetian Turks are on the brink of expultion



MESKHETIAN TURKS IN KRASNODAR ARE ON THE BRINK OF EXPULTION.


Between 15 and 18 thousand Meskhetian Turks (or Meskhetians) reside in
Krasnodar krai, a southern region of Russia. After the 1989 ethnic
clashes in Uzbekistan, they fled to some other republics of the Soviet
Union, including the Russian Federation. The Krasnodar authorities
have arbitrarily refused to grant them 'propiska', or registration by
place of residence. Meskhetians, like other people who did not have
propiska by 1992 and in defiance to the Russian citizenship law of
1991 are not officially recognised as Russian nationals. Therefore,
while being Russian citizens legally, they are in a position of de
facto stateless persons. 11-13 thousand Turks in Krasnodar are
deprived of almost all civil, political and social rights because they
don't have local propiska. Since 1992, the regional authorities in
Krasnodar krai repeatedly singled out the Meskhetian Turks by special
normative acts as a distinct category and subjected them to special
discriminatory treatment. The Meskhetians are regularly checked and
fined by police for the lack of registration. The Krasnodar government
and local officials overtly and publicly recognise that their goal is
to 'squeeze' the Turks out of the region. The Turks are also suffering
from 'checks', violent acts and harassment of the extreme nationalist
paramilitary units which call themselves 'Cossacks'. The federal
government clearly supports these policies.

Recently, the regional authorities have intensified pressure upon the
Turks.

The Turks have been completely denied access to justice. In the last
years, some of them tried to achieve three things by commencing
actions before the court: to confirm ownership of the houses they
purchased in 1989-90, to appeal against refusals in residence
registration and to confirm their status of Russian citizens. The
pressure of the regional executive on the courts is obvious and since
1997 the courts made unlawful decisions based not on the federal
legislation but on regional regulations. Many times the decisions in
favour of the Meskhetians Turks (mostly on residence registration)
were not implemented. Since 2001, the judges refuse to put Meskhetian
lawsuits on trial under various arbitrary pretexts.

In 2001, two Meskhetians whose access to court was denied brought a
action before the European Court on Human Rights under articles 6(1),
13 and 14 of the ECHR.

Since employment is actually prohibited for the people without local
residence registration, the Turks had two major sources of income. One
was cultivation of vegetables on the lands leased from local
collective farms or private persons. The other one was trade at local
bazaars. Within the recent months, the district authorities made the
landowners cancel all the leases with the Turks for the season of
2002. The Meskhetians also cannot sell vegetables even from the plots
of land attached to their houses. The local authorities refuse to give
them papers certifying that they possess these plots of land, and tax
inspection imposes fines for 'illegal' trade. The Turks are also
penalised for 'illegal' occupation of the land and houses which were
purchased 12-13 years ago but were arbitrarily refused registration.
The Turks cannot pay those administrative fines, and the local courts
have already arrested property (including livestock, food, cutlery) of
dozens of families. Summing up, the authorities have chosen hunger as
the most effective tool to get rid of the Turks. The administration of
the Krymsk district has also promised to start demolition of the
'unlawfully occupied' dwellings of the people without local permanent
residence registration (i.e. almost exclusively Meskhetians).

On 20 February 2002, the regional Legislative Assembly adopted the new
Decree # 1363 'On the Additional Measures to Decrease Tensions in
Inter-ethnic Relations in the Areas of Compact Settlement of
Meskhetian Turks Temporarily Residing on the Territory of Krasnodar
Krai' which confirmed a special status of the Turks as such. The act
contains two appeals to the federal government: to accelerate
negotiations with Georgia on the Meskhetian 'repatriation', to revise
the 1996 Treaty between the federal and Krasnodar authorities on the
division of competence and to grant the Krasnodar government new power
in the area of migration. Besides, it bans any way of residence
registration for 'stateless person' (in theory, the permission could
be given by the regional commission of migration control), envisages
more intensive passport and residence checks and requires strict
administrative control over the issue of papers certifying land
possession in the places of 'compact settlement of ethnic groups'.

On 18 March, the Krasnodar administration arranged the meeting in
Abinsk on migration issues for the officials of regional and district
levels. The governor Alexander Tkachev promised to increase fines for
living without registration up to 6,000 roubles (appr. 200 USD), to
create 'detention and filtration centres' within district police
departments and to establish the procedure of  deportation of the
'illegal migrants'. Some participants also proposed to determine
obligatory plans of eviction for each district, to pay charter flights
to Uzbekistan for displacement of Meskhetian Turks and to start
negotiations with the President of Armenia on future resettlement of
ethnic Armenians. Since then, the regional Legislative Assembly has
been working on the regulations of deportation from the krai.
Alexander Tkachev also said in Abinsk that his willingness to get rid
of 'migrants' had been supported by the Russian President. This
statement has not been anyhow refuted or even commented from the
Kremlin.

Moreover, the 1-year temporary registration for the Turks expired on 1
March, any new one is not envisaged by the local authorities. The
Meskhetians are currently subjected to house-to-house passport checks
and fining. The police works together with the Cossacks, the both
behave in an offensive manner. Any check or threat of eviction can
rapidly evolve into clashes. 'Soft ethnic cleansing' in Krasnodar krai
tends to become a massive violent expulsion.

The attack on the Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar must be viewed at the
moment as a part of the countrywide 'mop-up operation' against the
former USSR citizens.
Those former Soviet nationals who are not able to prove their Russian
citizenship and who live in Russia without permanent registration
(propiska) are officially perceived as 'illegal migrants'. However,
their coming to Russia and stay in Russia do not constitute a
violation of any law. The USSR Law 'On the Legal Status of Foreign
Nationals in the USSR' of 1981 is still in force but not applicable to
the former Soviet nationals in accordance with the government's
decisions. The people from CIS (except for Turkmenistan since 1998 and
Georgia since 2001) do not need Russian visas and the term of stay in
the country were not limited until 2001. They are obliged to register
their stay and residence on equal footing with Russian citizens.
Foreigners' labour rights are not restricted by any law. The people
from CIS countries encounter the ex-Soviet passport and propiska
system with its formal and informal restrictions; many of them were
denied registration. However, under the current legislation propiska
or its absence is not a criterion of 'lawfulness' or 'lawlessness' of
residence or migration.

Since 2000, the former Soviet nationals lost the right to acquire
Russian citizenship under the simplified procedure. They were equated
with comers from outside the CIS under the unpublished regulations of
the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They are now obliged to apply for
residence permits and the term of temporary stay for them is limited
to 1 month. At least hundreds thousand former Soviet nationals (there
are no definite and reliable figures so far) who have already lost
links with the countries of their origin and live in Russia for years
cannot comply with these requirements. Only those in Russia with
permanent residence registration were able to acquire Russian
citizenship. Now the people who cannot prove their Russian citizenship
and who live with temporary registration or without registration
regardless of the term of stay, property or business cannot get
residence permits. Temporary registration can be given only to those
who have a stamp of the border control in their passports. The people
have got in a trap; they are losing all rights and all social
perspectives.  The old type internal passports of the USSR are valid
until the end of 2003. The new citizenship law will reduce shortly the
opportunities to acquire Russian nationality. The new regulations are
neutral in ethnic terms but a number of signals sent by the State Duma
deputies and governmental officials can be apparently interpreted in
the way that the campaign is targeted primarily upon non-Russians.



Alexander Ossipov
The 'Memorial' Human Rights Centre,
programme co-ordinator,
12 Maly Karetny per., Moscow 103051
Russia
tel. +7 095 370 70 83 pr.
e-mail <[email protected]>,
website: www.memo.ru


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