Russia hunts for illegal immigrants; 2 thousand detained
Moscow (AsiaNews)
- Almost two thousand illegal immigrants have been detained in and around
Moscow alone and hundreds of others caught in fruit and vegetable markets throughout
the country: St. Petersburg, Perm Tyumen, Volgograd, Kamchatka, Udmurtia. This
is the result of the crackdown on "illegal immigrants", launched in
late July by the capital authorities which has spread to other regions in a matter
of days, on a wave of support from Russians and amid the criticism of human
rights defenders.
It
all started after a policeman was assaulted last month as he tried to arrest
the alleged perpetrator of sexual assault in a grocery market in the capital. A
minor, however unpleasant, episode was the straw that broke the camel's back. The
administration of mayor Serghey Sobyanin - who is running for re-election in
September - launched zachistki (clean-up), a term that came into use during the
Chechen wars. Temporarily
to accommodate the large number of illegal immigrants stopped by the police in
the district of Golyanovo, a tent city was set up, but it is still uncertain
whether the move is actually legal. Many
of the detained migrants - about 600 - are of Vietnamese origin and dozens of
them have already been repatriated. The
nationalities of the detained illegal workers include Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz
Syrians, Egyptians and Afghans. The
inhumane conditions of the camp - where is overpopulated and access to which is
barred for migrants' lawyers - have been denounced by human rights
organizations, raising the concerns of some embassies, such as the Vietnamese.
Svetlana
Gannushkina, head of the Civil Service - which deals with the rights of
refugees - has called the Moscow tent city "a place of illegal
detention," where there are also people with a valid Russian residence
permit. Human
Rights Watch has asked the municipal administration to close the camp and put
an end to a campaign which, they say, is targeting immigrants simply because of
their nationality or skin color.
Sobyanin
defended himself, assuring that "it's all perfectly normal." "In
every country, when there is an emergency situation, the government starts to
act in the most severe way." Despite
the protests, the campaign is not likely to end soon: the Federal Service for
immigration is planning the construction of more than 80 temporary camps for
illegal immigrants and announced that it will expand its staff by at least 4500
employees.
According
to some analysts, the plan "against illegal immigrants" is part of
the Sobyanin campaign, the Kremlin candidate in the race, to gain consensus in
the first round. Xenophobic
sentiment among Russians, especially in the capital, is very high and also
affects the more educated and younger voters. According
to estimates by the Russian presidency, there are over 10 million undocumented
immigrants throughout the Federation. That
figure - say experts - has grown over 15-20 years of increasing corruption
among public officials and the business sector, which exploits cheap immigrant labor.
The
zachistki - note civil activists - are likely, however, to feed the
ever-burning and inter-ethnic tensions especially in large cities, where
numerous markets and construction sites employ many immigrants from the former
Soviet republics and the Russian Caucasus, whose inhabitants - mostly
Muslims - are treated as though they are immigrants despite being Russian
citizens.
Meanwhile,
a petition has been launched calling for the city of Moscow to close the tent
city of Golyanovo: it demands an investigation into violations of the rights of
migrants; that their seized documents be returned, access granted to lawyers
and press. The
petition has now collected only 250 signatures so far.
.png)
20/04/2007
16/12/2010
22/10/2018 14:09
