Nizhni Novgorod's Kurdish Minority

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Subject: Nizhni Novgorod's Kurdish Minority

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Nizhni Novgorod's Kurdish Minority


Nizhni Novgorod's Kurdish Minority: A Microcosm of Russia's Abusive 
Registration Practices

Susan Brazier
for
Memorial Human Rights Centre, Moscow

2 November 1999

Much of the following is based on information provided by Alexander
Kurskov of the Nizhni Novgorod Human Rights Society.

In Moscow, the plight of the thousands upon thousands of individuals
who are currently being harassed, having money extorted from them and
being threatened with expulsion from their place of residence has been
quite widely reported; the tool for this harassment is the residence
registration system.

The scale of this particular type of administrative abuse is not
always so vast nor so well-recorded, however. Throughout Russia,
individuals, often members of minority and migrant communities, find
themselves at the mercy of arbitrary officials and nonsensical, often
illegal, procedures. In Nizhni Novgorod, central Russia, a small group
of Kurds are suffering official harassment, insecurities and
indignities similar to those of hundreds and thousands of refugees and
forced migrants in Moscow.

The period between 1991 and 1994 saw unprecedented mass migration
throughout the disintegrating former Soviet Union/CIS. At that time, a
stream of migrants fleeing growing instability in Azerbaijan and
Armenia arrived in Nizhni Novgorod. The majority of them were
Russians, who were generally well-received by the local population.
However, amongst the newcomers was also a handful of Kurds. Today,
there are between 160 and 170 Kurds from this group living in the
southeastern agrarian Knyaginiskyi and Bolshemyrashkinskyi Districts
of Nizhni Novgorod Region.

The Kurds were at first welcomed because of a lack of manpower in the
area. However, as with so many other peoples in so many areas of
Russia, their situation became complicated by this country's
registration system. For no clear or defensible reasons, Nizhni
officials refused and have continued to refuse to grant permanent
residency status to close to a fifth of the Kurds in the two
Districts; 35 individuals, representing 13 families, have been for
years refused registration; six had their registration taken away
after it was granted. In addition to those 35, 12 teenagers whobecame
legally of age to receive a passport while on Russian territory have
been denied this right. Kurdish children born in Nizhni are not being
supplied with proper 
documentation.

It is quite likely that some of the Kurds are in fact Russian citizens
under the country's 6 February 1992 Citizenship Act. However, the lack
of documentation prevents authorities from establishing who was
present on Russia Territory at the time the Act came into force.

Nizhni passport authorities have in fact provided the Kurds with
minimal written documentation about their entire registration
procedures, only responding verbally to their applications. This
practice shrouds the entire matter still further in administrative
confusion and ensures that no official record is maintained of the
ongoing bureaucratic harassment.

Passport authorities use as their excuse for denying registration the
claim that Kurds without a stamp releasing them from war service in
their original place of residence are unable to obtain permanent
residency status. However, this is not only an irrational request �
people fleeing unrest cannot be expected to ensure that their official
papers are properly cleared with the authorities, nor can people who
have fled unrest be expected to return to the country they have fled �
but by its very nature cannot apply to women, who are exempt from the
draft, yet they too are being denied registration.

Military de-registration as a precondition for residence registration
is not prescribed for by federal law, but is covered by instructions
from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (N 393 of 23/10/95 and N 394 of
30/06/98). Nizhny officials use this order as the basis of their
rejection of the Kurds's claims, even though it conflicts with not
only federal registration regulations, but also federal legislation
governing freedom of movement, as well as the 2 February 1998
Constitutional Court decision that declared many of the practices,
regulations and restrictions of the country's registration system to
be unconstitutional.

The Nizhni authorities then compound their abuse of power by fining
the Kurds for not returning to obtain a stamp that they do not need in
the first place. The fines can be in the region of 700 rubles every
three months � monthly wages for cattle minders such as the Kurds are
roughly 400-500 rubles. Sometimes, fines are extracted not from the
Kurds themselves, but from their employers, a practice that obviously
creates tensions between employers and employees. These fines, as set
down in regional legislation, are far in excess of the limits
envisaged for such infractions in the Code on Administrative Offences.

The consequences of this bureaucratic harassment are far-reaching.
These unregistered Kurdish adults have difficulties getting work and
obtaining adequate housing. Officially documenting marriages, births
and deaths is extremely complicated. One man has for two years not
been able to register officially the death of his wife, which caused
difficulties when he tried to arrange for her funeral. The twenty
children born to Kurdish families since their arrival in Nizhni only
received their birth certificates this year. Many children do not go
to school because it is risky to walk about openly without
documentation.

In May 1999, a law suit was launched challenging the region's
registration system. In July however, the Kurds lost the case when the
court upheld the rationale that the men needed to deregister from
their military service requirements in Armenia for them to obtain
residency status in Russia, despite, as noted above, the fact that the
order upon which this rationale is based contradicts Russian law.

This is a clear example of one of the fundamental problems of the
development of Russian legislation in general and registration
regulations in particular. Local laws and official regulations are
issued that add conditions to federal legislation, change its
essential purpose or are in blatant conflict with it. The causes are
many and include local and administrative power grabs and lack of
central enforcement mechanisms. The results are local-level legal
confusion and opportunities for underpaid administrators to extort
money from those in even weaker positions than they � so often
minorities, migrants and others similarly dispossessed.

Shortly after the case concluded, the Kurds' story took another twist
that helps illustrate how local authorities operate. In response to
the ongoing queries about this Kafka-esque situation, authorities
proposed a "compromise" solution. Still refusing to register the Kurds
permanently, they at last agreed to register them temporarily, but
without charging them the large fee that had hindered temporary
registration in the past. At the same time, they granted permanent
registration to four families. This is a classic tactic: provide
enough concessions to appear conciliatory without in fact
relinquishing the upper hand.

Things have reached a type of equilibrium, perhaps, but it is an
equilibrium based on falsehood and one that perpetuates the insecurity
of the Kurdish community. Status that is not permanent can be revoked
and the Kurds are left at the mercy of any future legislative or
regulatory machinations that legislators or administrators may devise.

This particular court case may be over and the issue in this community
may have lost its immediacy � for now � but the situation remains the
same in other areas of the region. In fact, the local publicity
generated by this case has led to the discovery by the local human
rights group of another, hitherto unknown group of Kurds suffering the
same indignities in another district of Nizhni Novgorod.

Finally, some indications of what the future holds have also recently
emerged. The Nizhni Duma recently made some amendments to the region's
registration procedures. The fine for being in violation of the
registration regulations was raised to 10 to 20 times the minimum
wage. Of those arriving in search of work, only people with a
certificate from the migration service will be able to register. They
have also added an article stating that the law be applied to those
Russian citizens arriving from unstable regions in the same more
restrictive manner that it is applied to CIS citizens.

A deputy interviewed on the changes stated that they were necessary in
order to ensure that the authorities could mount an effective fight
against terrorists. It appears, then, that the authorities in both
Moscow and across the country have found for themselves a new
justification for their ongoing harassment of this country's minority
communities.


Susan Brazier is a Human Rights Researcher. She provided this piece to
Memorial Human Rights Centre, Moscow.
Memorial's web site is http://www.memo.ru

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