MINELRES: Meskhetians in Krasnodar in 2003

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Original sender: Alexander Osipov <aossipov@online.ru> 


MESKHETIAN TURKS IN KRASNODAR KRAI THROUGHOUT THE YEAR OF 2003.

By Alexander Osipov


Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar Krai, a southern region of Russia, is an
overtly persecuted minority group. The number of Meskhetian in Krasnodar
Krai is estimated between 15 and 19 thousand. After the 1989 ethnic
clashes, they fled Uzbekistan 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, most of them are in a position of de facto
stateless persons. However, some Meskhetians arrived in Krasnodar Krai
before 1989, got propiska and later on were recognized Russian
nationals. Some Meskhetians from Krasnodar (up to 5,000, according to
some estimates) in the recent years got propiska and Russian passports
in neighbouring regions like Rostov oblast. While their actual residence
is in Krasnodar Krai, they find themselves in almost the same position
as those Turks who are considered �stateless�: they are denied residence
registration, the right to work, property rights, health care etc.
Totally, 11,000 � 13,000 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 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.

 

The regional authorities strengthened pressure upon the Turks in 2002.
The Turks were completely denied access to justice: the local judges
refused to put Meskhetian lawsuits on trial under various arbitrary
pretexts. The authorities did their best to deprive the Turks by new
administrative bans of all available sources of income like selling
vegetables from the plots of land attached to their houses or leasing
land from local owners. The Turks were penalised for �illegal�
occupation of the land and houses, which were purchased 13-14 years ago,
but were arbitrarily refused registration.

 

How was the situation evolving in 2003?

 

Formal status and citizenship. The Federal Law �On the Legal Status of
Foreign Citizens in the Russian Federation� which took effect on 1
November 2002, has exacerbated the problems faced by the Meskhetians
like other Soviet citizens without Russian residence registration.
Anyone living in Russia by that date, who did not have either residence
permit or �propiska�, was considered a person temporarily staying in the
country and had to receive a migration card as a newcomer. Meanwhile,
almost all former Soviet citizens (except for some small categories)
arrived and resided in Russia lawfully since there were neither legal
restrictions for these people on entry in the country nor limitations on
the terms of stay or the right to work. Hence, the new order means
de-legalisation of hundreds of thousand people. �Migration card� now
limits the duration of stay to three months; if a person is unable to
obtain temporary residence permit within this term, s/he has to leave
the country or become an illegal migrant who can be deported. However,
the procedure of applying for temporary residence permits can then take
up to six months, according to the law. Furthermore, these people are
deprived of the right to work or to have any other source of income in
Russia.

 

The authorities regard Meskhetian Turks in Krasnodar as stateless
persons and consider that members of this group are eligible for
migration cards. But even if the Turks after getting the migration cards
apply for temporary residence permits they have almost no chance to
receive them. Annual regional quotas limit the number of people entitled
to temporary permits, and the quota for Krasnodar Krai is low. An
applicant has to prove that s/he has a dwelling and a source of income
while the Turks� employment is prohibited and property rights are not
recognised officially. More, the Krasnodar authorities many times
announced that they wouldn�t let the Turks take roots in the region. In
the meantime, the 2002 Federal Law �On Citizenship of the Russian
Federation� even with the amendments of November 2003 effectively denies
the legal right of ex-Soviet nationals, who did not have propiska in
Russia by June 2002 or who do not possess permanent residence permit at
the moment, to apply for Russian citizenship.

 

The Meskhetian activists and most Turks in Krasnodar Krai stick to the
1991 Russian law on citizenship and consider themselves Russian
nationals since they meet all requirements of the law. Moreover, many of
them are trying to confirm their citizenship and get a Russian passport
by a court decision. Therefore, the Turks refused to take migration
cards and thus to recognise themselves foreigners. They also clearly
understand that those who take the cards will have their names and all
information on the (alleged) administrative offences recorded in the
centralised database on foreigners with no chances to make corrections
in these records changes in the future. Those who stay without migration
cards are denied temporary registration by place of stay. Those who have
got Russian passports in the other regions are denied residence
registration. 

 

The old-type internal Soviet passports were to expire on 31 December
2003. The RF Supreme Court, however, concluded in November that the RF
Ministry of Internal Affairs did not have a legal right to limit the
term of validity for this kind of identity papers. According to the RF
Government Decree No. 731 of 4 December, Soviet passports of stateless
persons would be deemed valid until 1 June 2006 only if the holder had
been registered in Russia in �the established order� on 1 November 2002.
Therefore, a significant part of the Turks in Krasnodar Krai have become
undocumented since 1 January. Fortunately, some of the Krasnodar
Meskhetians have formal residence registration in other places of
Russia.

 

Police checks and harassment. The regional authorities several times
within the year launched campaigns to force the Meskhetians to accept
the cards. In February-March, police arranged house-to-house passport
and identity checks in some villages of Apsheronsk and Abinsk districts
where Meskhetians lived. In course of these actions, the people were
threatened and demanded to take the cards; some did this, but most
refused and were fined. Later on, the local Turkish activists were
officially warned about future reprisals if they obstruct distribution
of the cards among their people. The new campaign passed in September
throughout the krai. During the house-to-house checks, the police and
local authorities tried to distribute the migration cards again. At that
time fines for violation of passport regime and threats to confiscate
property were combined with the promises to legalise and register those
who take the cards. The police also took away passports of approximately
41-42 people and promised to return them only to those who would come
and take the cards. The majority resisted, but several dozen people
surrendered. Later on, some of them who applied for Russian passports
were denied this with a reference to the migration cards, which they had
taken before.

 

Besides that, �ordinary� passport and identity checks as within the
previous decades took place throughout the year. House-to-house checks
are combined with checks on the streets and on the fields where
Meskhetians worked. Traffic police also stops vehicles for checking
passports of the drivers and passengers who look like the Turks and
imposes fines for the lack of registration. The difference between the
holders of Russian passports and those who still have Soviet passports
or no IDs at all is that the former pay the fine of 100 roubles (appr.
3.5 USD) and the latter from 500 to 1000 roubles for staying without
registration. In several cases, the Turks were detained and sentenced to
administrative arrest up to 10 days. In 2003, the regional authorities
established a new service � immigration inspection. Since summer 2003 it
conducts the search for �illegal migrants�, primarily at the local
construction works, markets and fields. Immigration inspectors either
impose fines on the employers or extort bribes, and that entailed
several dozens of firings throughout second half of the year. Among the
fired just �in case� was even a Meskhetian who had Russian passport and
local propiska and worked as a physician in Novorossiisk. 

 

Deportation. The threats to deport Meskhetian Turks en masse were made
public for the first time by the Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev in
March 2002. This threat did not materialised for the Meskhetians until
December 2003, although the number of ex-Soviet nationals physically
deported from Krasnodar in that year reached 1050 people, most of whome
were from Tadjikistan. On 16 December, a judge of the Anapa district
court V.Lantukh in an administrative process convicted two Turks � Lutfi
and Ridvan Muradovs - to deportation from Russia. The decision was made
in absence of these people. However, there is no place to expel these
people to. They left Uzbekistan in 1989 and have no links with this
country; their families and homes are in Krasnodar Krai. Fortunately,
these two people were not detained although the authorities have the
legal right to keep them in custody for an unlimited time. Cassation
action was brought before the regional court, and Muradov�s are still
awaiting the decision. The outcome is still unclear, and it is not
obvious that that this incident will be followed by a mounting
expulsion. One should take into account, that a part or recent reprisals
against the Meskhetians look like selective test actions. The
authorities undertake something knew against individual Meskhetians or
small groups and then look what will happen of it.

 

Employment and occupation. The 2002 federal law on foreigners prohibits
employment of non-citizens unless they have employment permit, temporary
or permanent residence permit. In addition, the Krasnodar regional
legislation prohibits employment or any other payable occupation for the
people (even Russian citizens) without local residence registration. In
2002, as mentioned above, the regional and local authorities imposed
more and more bans and restrictions on the Meskhetians employment and
small business. However, the Turks survive, since the local market needs
their labour, primarily in agriculture, but they are pushed into the
�informal� economy. Many of them work as temporary manual labourers
without any formal contracts and social guarantees at local construction
works or in agricultural enterprises. Many still lease lands from
private owners or large agricultural enterprises to cultivate
vegetables. All these deals are also �informal�, based on oral
agreements and camouflaged by fake contracts with some local people who
have propiska. The local administrations and immigration inspection
several times tried to trace these contracts and to sweep the Turks away
from the fields in Krymsk and Abinsk districts. The Turks prefer to work
in the neighbouring districts, and traffic police checks cars on
administrative borders and detain people without local residence
registration. Some Turks leave for other regions of Russia as
agricultural season workers.

 

Mob violence. On 25 April, mass disorders broke out in the settlement
Kholmski, the Abinsk district, between 11 and 12 p.m. A group of
approximately 50 young people coming by a bus and 4 cars supposedly from
Abinsk and other places, severely bate up about 30 local people who
looked like non-Russians, mostly Armenian and Meskhetian Turks. 6 people
were wounded. In June, the local public prosecutor�s office processed a
criminal case under Article 213 of the Russian Criminal Code
(�Hooliganism�). By the end of the year it was reported that the
investigators had not find out any person to be accused. Meanwhile, many
eyewitnesses declared that they had noticed some active members of the
Abinsk Cossack organisation among the people making raid on Kholmski.

 

The rest incidents were of a small scale and concerned individuals.
However, the Cossack leaders make regular statements that they won�t
tolerate the Turks in Krasnodar Krai any more. 

 

Position of the regional authorities. The Krasnodar regional
legislation, which restricts registration of Russian citizens and
non-nationals and limits the rights of unregistered persons, actually
did not change in 2003.

 

The regional administration as well as local authorities, as in the
previous years, urged resettlement of the Turks out of the region. On 23
April, the municipal Council of the Krymsk district adopted a statement,
which called the governor and the regional legislature for urgent
relocation of the Meskhetians from the krai. On 3 July, in his interview
to a local TV channel, the Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev called
Meskhetian Turks a �dangerous nation� and confirmed that the regional
government was building �deportation camps�. In August-September he
several times made public statements about the forthcoming mass
expulsion of �illegal migrants�. In his interview to the agency
Rostov.ru on 18 September, Tkachev denied any ethnic background of the
fight against migration and ask not to consider him a �Nazy�, but
justified his policy by the �rapid change in ethnic composition of the
population�. 

 

Position of the federal authorities. All federal agencies involved went
on in justifying the Krasnodar policies towards the Meskhetians. An aide
of the Public Prosecutor General V.Bolshov in his letter (7/2-3546-2003
from 5 December 2003) to the Novorossiisk Foundation �School of Peace�
wrote that were no discrimination against the Meskhetians or violation
of minority rights in Krasnodar Krai, because none of the public
prosecutor�s office had got any complaints from the Turks. In his view,
the Turks were to blame themselves because they avoided the envisaged
procedures of registration and applying for citizenship. On 3 October,
the Russian President Vladimir Putin during his meeting with war
veterans and Cossack activists in Krasnodar said that Meskhetian Turks
as a people had the right to return back to Georgia. They still live in
Russia since Georgia neglects its obligations before the Council of
Europe. �Until the Turks stay in Russia they shall live normally and
obey our laws�. Certainly, Putin did not say a word about the rights of
the Meskhetians themselves. On 10 December, there was a meeting between
Putin and members of the RF Security Council, on the one hand, and a
group of Russian human rights activists, on the other. This meeting was
initiated by the Human Rights Commission under the RF President. Putin
responded to a remark about the Krasnodar Meskhetians in the following
way: �ethnic balance is broken in Krasnodar Krai, in some villages there
are even more Armenians than Russians; it�s not our fault that Georgia
does not fulfils its obligations; we cannot grant citizenship to the
Meskhetian Turks because the local population is against this�.

 

Judicial practices. In 2003, many Turks went on in defending their
rights in court of justice, although the previous experience was rather
negative. In many cases, Krasnodar Krai courts were obviously biased in
relation to the Meskhetian Turks; the courts� decisions were not in
plaintiffs' favour and ignored requirements of the law. Sometimes the
courts did not register or did not process claims submitted by
Meskhetians. The same practices took place throughout 2003.
Nevertheless, several defence lawyers provide the Turks with legal aid
free of charge. Two lawyers were working within a regional human rights
NGO �Dobroye Delo� (�Good Cause�, funded by the UNHCR) and two within a
project of the Human Rights Centre �Memorial� (funding is provided by
the Open Society Institute � Legal Justice Initiative). Most of the
cases were on refusals in issuance of Russian passports (i.e. official
recognition of Russian citizenship), on refusals in registration at the
place of residence and on contesting administrative penalties. The total
number of Meskhetian civil cases throughout the year was 30, and 27 of
them were in process by the end of the year.

 

All defence lawyers who deal with the Meskhetians in Krasnodar Krai face
a strong resistance of the regional judiciary. The main problems in 2003
were either informal refusal of judges to give start to actions brought
on behalf of Meskhetians or keeping these suits without movement under
various arbitrary pretexts. That requires commence of partial complaints
to the courts of second instance and means wasting of time. Similar
red-tape practices are used by the higher instances; therefore legal
defence of minorities is going on at a snail�s pace.

 

Nevertheless, in a few cases the outcome was positive. Twice district
courts recognised the fact of the claimants� permanent residence in
Russia on the data the 1991 citizenship law had taken effect (however,
the police pays no attention to these decisions and refuses to issue
Russian passports to these people). In July, a judge of the Krymsk
district court annulled administrative penalty imposed on a Meskhetian
Turk. In November, the Apsheronsk district court ruled that the family
of Dursunov�s (5 people) must be registered by the place of residence in
their own house. 

 

The action of Zuhra and Mustafa Eminovs brought in July 2001 before the
European Court on Human Rights under articles 6(1), 13 and 14 of the
ECHR were declined under formal reasons in March 2003.

 

Pressure upon local NGOs which defend the Turks. In spring, the
Krasnodar regional department of justice tried to close down under a
formal pretext a Krasnodar NGO �Yuznaya Volna� (Southern Wave), which
made statements in support of national minorities and arranged open
discussions on the issues of migration and ethnic discrimination. After
the campaign of solidarity, the department of justice withdrew its
lawsuit against �Yuzhnaya Volna�. During the negotiations with the
officials, the representatives of �Yuzhnaya Volna� were told that they
won�t had troubles if they hadn�t got involved in the Meskhetian issues.
Later on, the department of justice commenced a similar suit against the
Novorissisk Foundation �Shkola Mira� (the School of Peace), which was
closed down by a district court in Novorossisk on 8 December. Just to
remind, the Krasnodar branch of the Meskhetian society �Vatan� was
closed down under the same scheme in July 2002.

 

The recent rumours. A reliable source, which wished to remain anonymous,
informed that the RF Government was drafting a plan to resettle the
Meskhetians from Krasnodar Krai to some northern territories of Russia.
Anyway, one can hardly expect that this resettlement, if really happens,
would be voluntary and that the Turks would get real compensation for
their houses. One should also take into account that the Cossacks or
other extremist groups, acting together with the police or separately,
at any moment are able to provoke large-scale clashes with a following
expulsion or �evacuation� of at least a part of the Turks.

 

Positive developments. Administration of the Krymsk district did not
start demolition of the �unlawfully occupied� dwellings of the people
without local permanent residence registration (i.e. almost exclusively
Meskhetians), while repeatedly promised to do that.

 

Alexander Osipov
Human Rights Centre 'Memorial' 

Maly Karetny pereulok 12, Moscow
103051 Russia
tel. +7 095 370 70 83 pr.
fax +7 095 209 57 79
e-mail <aossipov@online.ru>

 

P.S. The New Year has brought a new amusement for the Meskhetian Turks.
Krasnodar Krai�s administration banned the concerts of a Meskhetian
Turkish folk band �Meko� from Kazakhstan. The concerts were to take
place on 1-5 January in Krymsk and Abinsk districts.