CHECHNYA LINKS LIBRARY

Foreign passports of Chechen pilgrims to be marked

Timur Aliyev, North Caucasus – The passports for foreign travel that will be issued to residents of Chechnya setting off on a haj (Muslim holy pilgrimage) will be marked with a special barcode, announced Ali Muguyev, head of the republic’s passport and visa service.

“Unlike ordinary foreign passports, whose bearers may go all over the world, the owners of these passports will only be able to go on a haj,” he said.

The Passport and Visa Service (PVS) of the Chechen Republic was forced to take such a precautionary measure in order to ensure that foreign passports were not issued to people who were not intending to make a pilgrimage.

“The list of pilgrims we received from the muftiate, signed by Mufti Akhmat Shamayev, looks rather strange,” Muguyev explained. “For example, while 19 places are allocated for the 100,000 residents of the Urus-Martan district, there are 35 listed in the application for the Vedeno district, which only has about 20,000 inhabitants.”

Muguyev said that the inclusion of the barcode in the passports of the 400 prospective pilgrims was approved in Moscow. “We especially asked Moscow for this, and they met our request.”

Obtaining a passport for foreign travel in this way still remains the only option for most people who want to go abroad. As previously, it is still impossible for an ordinary resident of Chechnya to obtain this document. Foreign passports are only issued to representatives of the republic’s leadership, and then only after checking by several security services.

Ordinary Chechen residents who wish to obtain a foreign passport have to do so in semi-legal fashion. As a rule they make a temporary registration in one of the neighbouring North Caucasus republics, and obtain a foreign passport there.

(MD/T)