MINELRES: Meskhetian hunger strike in Krasnodar

[Alexander Ossipov]

Meskhetians' hunger strike in Krasnodar Krai.


A group of Meskhetian Turks who reside in Kiyevskoye village of
Krasnodar Krai, a southern region of Russia, went on hunger strike on 22
June protesting against persecutions and harassment. The strike was
suspended on 1 July; however the Turks did not withdraw their demands.
The regional officials made enormous pressure upon the people
participating in the action and threatened to punish them. The local
human rights NGOs which defend the Meskhetian Turks are targeted by the
Federal Security Service (FSB, the former KGB) and police. Extreme
nationalist paramilitary units of Cossacks threatened the Turks with
violence; the situation was on the brink of clashes.

Meskhetian Turks or Meskhetians were deported from Southern Georgia to
Central Asia in 1944. After the 1989 disorders in the Ferghana province
of Uzbekistan, Meskhetians fled to other republics of the Soviet Union,
including the Russian Federation. Krasnodar authorities arbitrarily
refused to grant them registration permission, still known as "propiska"
as in the Soviet era. Meskhetians in Krasnodar are actually Russian
citizens under the 1991 citizenship law. Some 11-13.000 Turks there are
arbitrarily denied residence registration; therefore in direct violation
of the law they are not officially recognised as Russian nationals.
Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar are deprived of almost all civil,
political, and social rights under the pretext that they do not have
residence registration. Meskhetian Turks are subjected to special
discriminatory treatment; the Krasnodar government blatantly
acknowledges that its goal is to squeeze the Turks out of the region by
making their life unbearable. Other minority groups like Kurds,
Armenians, Georgians are also suffering from the strengthening campaign
of persecutions, discrimination and harassment led by the authorities.
The federal government has clearly supported these policies.

In recent months, the regional authorities have intensified pressure
upon the Meskhetians as well as upon other ethnic minorities. The
district administrations forced landowners to cancel all leases with the
Meskhetians for the 2002 season. The Meskhetians are now also barred
from all other sources of income like selling vegetables even from plots
of land attached to their houses. In short, the authorities have chosen
starvation as the most effective tool to get rid of the Meskhetian
Turks. In addition, some Turks were denied medical care even for money
in the polyclinics of Krymsk district (anyhow, they don't have access to
any kind of medical insurance); some Turkish kids were expelled from
local kindergartens. The regional government also promised to start
deportation of the people without local "propiska" who are identified in
Krasnodar as "illegal migrants". The local officials and media blatantly
portrait these "illegal migrants" as ethnic minorities. Two Kurdish
families were expelled in April to the neighbouring region of Rostov.
However, all the talks about deportation are looking like a manoeuvring
to divert public attention from economic strangulation of migrant
minorities, especially the Meskhetians.

Desperate people went on hunger strike. Some 200 Meskhetian Turks (68
families) live in Kiyevskoye village. In the last spring, they have lost
all available possibilities to earn a living. The Turks from Kiyevskoye
declared hunger strike on 21 June and started on the next day. They
demanded recognition of their Russian citizenship, residence
registration and issue of passports for the Turks who permanently lived
in the region, stop of ethnic discrimination and full respect for their
rights, including the right to health care and access to schools,
abolition of the ban for the Turks on leasing land and selling
agricultural production. They also wanted special representatives of the
President's Administration and of international organisations to come to
the region and to examine the state of Meskhetians. The hunger strike
was a spontaneous action, it was not initiated by the "Vatan" society of
Meskhetian Turks. The "Vatan" leaders learned about the action after it
had started.

A few days before, the delegation of the Russian Council of Federation
(the upper chamber of the Parliament) visited the Krasnodar Krai. The
purpose of the visit was to examine the situation of Meskhetian Turks in
the region. The senators refused to have a separate meeting with
Meskhetian Turks' representatives. Some Turks were just admitted to the
delegation's meeting with the local administration and Cossacks in the
Krymsk district. The delegation clearly stated that it found the
situation in the region acceptable and that the Turks in Krasnodar won't
get either citizenship or residence registration. That provoked the
hunger strike.

On 22 June, the number of people on strike was 27, later it increased to
37; the rest of the Turks in Kiyevskoye supported the action and joined
it for a day or more in rotation. The Turkish leaders in Kiyevskoye
asked the district hospital to provide medical care for the time of
hunger strike. However, this request was neglected for several days and
the ambulance arrived in Kiyevskoye only on Tuesday, 25 June. By 1 July,
9 Meskhetians from Kiyevskoye were hospitalised.

After 26 June, the village was full of policemen and FSB officers.
Representatives of the regional government, regional police directorate
and the Krymsk district administration visited Kiyevskoye on 27 June.
They threatened the Turks, called the hunger strike a "provocation". On
the same day, the major regional paper "Kubanskiye novosti" published an
interview with the Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev. At that time
the eastern part of the region as well as the entire North Caucasus
suffered from an catastrophic flood which had began on 23 June. Tkachev
called the action in Kiyevskoye a "provocation" and blamed the
Meskhetian activists that they deceived common people for their own
"rotten political purposes", wanted to benefit from the disaster and
fuelled ethnic tensions. He said: "the Turkish-Meskhetian leaders do not
perceive our common tragedy as their own. They put themselves to the
other side of morality and humanity. I don't want to negotiate with such
people." Later on, the regional and local papers launched a serious of
publications on the hunger strike. They were hostile towards the
Meskhetians, contained almost no information on the causes of action and
the requirements and referred to the strike as a "provocation",
"incitement of ethnic hatred" and a "blow on our back". On 28 June, a
group of approximately 200 Cossacks arrived in Kiyevskoye to "talk to"
the Meskhetians. Many Meskhetians also came from other localities. The
clashes nearly broke out; the police managed to prevent them.

On 27 June, the chairman of the 'Vatan' Central Council Yusuf Sarvarov
had a meeting in Moscow with the head of the Federal Migration Service,
deputy minister of Internal Affairs Andrei Chernenko. According to
Sarvarov,  Chernenko said that the federal government is willing to
prevent any illegal actions of the Krasnodar authorities and won't
enable them to deport or expel the Turks. On the next day, 28 June,
Sarvarov was admitted to the working meeting in the President's
Administration on the issue of Meskhetian Turks. The hunger strike was
not discussed at these meetings. However, the officials said that the
problem of Meskhetians in Krasnodar must be solved, the Constitution and
federal laws must be respected and involuntary relocation of the Turks
cannot be a solution. Ivanov also said that the Public Prosecutor
General must interfere in the Krasnodar situation more actively. In his
view, all the previous commissions on the Meskhetian issued had turned
out to be ineffective. Ivanov declared that the new commission under the
President's Administration would be formed soon. Meanwhile, the Russian
government in 1994 established the Interdepartmental Commission on the
Meskhetian Turks. The Commission still exists; it has always clearly
supported the policies of the Krasnodar authorities like the other
federal bodies.

The Meskhetian activists decided to suspend the strike from 1 July by
two reasons: the flood and the promise of the President's Administration
to create a new commission on the Meskhetian Turks. They do know
withdraw their demands and say that the strike will be restarted if the
commission does not come to the region within a reasonable time.

The authorities intensified pressure on the human rights organisations
in the region. The police repeatedly checked members of the Novorossiisk
Human Rights Committee (NHRC). The outcoming regular and electronic mail
has not been reaching the addressees and the Committees website was
deleted from the server. Some printing shops in Novorossiisk have
refused to issue the paper and leaflets of the NHRC; the owners let the
Committee know that the FSB had enforced them to do that. In general,
intensive control of the FSB over the Krasnodar NGOs which maintained
contacts with the minorities NGOs has been lasting for at least 5 recent
years. The local police authorities told human rights activists and some
Meskhetian leaders that they would be persecuted soon under the new
federal law against extremism. Finally, two officers of the Regional
Department for combat against organised crime (RUBOP) came to the NHRC
office on 1 July. They did not have any lawful order but wanted to
search the office and demanded all internal documentation and full list
of NHRC members. The officers were not allowed to take any documents and
left, but the local RUBOP still wants to "negotiate" with the NHRC and
offers an "unofficial" meeting.


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 <aossipov@online.ru>,
website: www.memo.ru