Re: Does UNHCR support ethnic cleansings?

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From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 11:27:48 +0200 (EET)
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Does UNHCR support ethnic cleansings?

From: MINELRES moderator <[email protected]>

Original sender: Natalie Belitser <[email protected]>

Re: Does UNHCR support ethnic cleansings?


Dear Oleksandr Ossipov,

responding to your message, I forwarded it to some people from the
UNHCR office in Geneva, I am going also to show it to the UNHCR
Bureau/Kyiv. I fully share your concerns about such extremely
vulnerable group as Meskhetian Turks, in particular, residing in south
of Russia. Do you know that 10,000 Meskhetian Turks, who also arrived
after the pogroms in Uzbekistan, are now living in Ukraine? Most of
them are, unfortunately, dispersed, living together as only 20-30
families, mainly in villages of South Ukraine. Our human rights
community, as well as scholars and officials from the State Committee
on Nationalities and Migration. Though these concerns are not about
any kind of ethnic or religious discrimination, - fortunately, there
seems no tension on this ground, also not about any kind of formal
status - practically all of them received the citizenship of Ukraine,
- but because of their widespread fears of eventual assimilation, loss
of their own identity, and longing to return to their own homeland in
South Georgia. 

By the way, the representative sociological survey of summer 1997 has
shown that only 3% of a whole Meskhetian Turks population of Ukraine
would like to emigrate to Turkey! If you would be interested in
publications on Meskhetian Turks in Ukraine, we can send you the one
already published in the Migration Issues Journal (Ukrainian and
English versions), and the last one, accepted for publication in the
same journal.

With best regards,

Natalya Belitser, Director
Center for Pluralism at the Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy

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