CHECHNYA LINKS LIBRARY

Plan to dismantle tent refugee camps in Ingushetia dropped, concerns remain

Ruslan Isayev & Timur Aliyev, North Caucasus – The Russian authorities have dropped the plan to dismantle all Chechen tent refugee camps in Ingushetia by the end of this year but concerns about the fate of the refugees remain.

On December 20, the deadline for the liquidation of the camps expired. According to Toby Lanzer, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Russian officials do not set any longer exact deadlines by which the tent camps should be closed down.

In spite of that, the rumour among Chechen refugees has it that they will have to leave their tents and return to temporary accommodation centers in Chechnya by January 10.

In recent days, Anna Neistat, director of the Moscow office of Human Rights Watch, paid a 10-day visit to Ingushetia to visit Chechen refugee camps. According to her, there is no real alternative to the tent camps in Ingushetia. The accommodation which the Migration Service of Ingushetia is ready to provide to refugees is in fact window dressing, Neistat said adding that she visited all places from the list provided by the local migration officials but failed to finding a place suitable for living.

Thus far the authorities managed to liquidate the Iman tent camp in Aki-yurt, which was to be followed by refugee camps in the Ingush town of Ordzhonikidzevskaya. In other camps in Ingushetia the supply of gas and electricity is often interrupted, which is perceived by refugees as an attempt to make them leave the camps.

According to the latest official figures, there remain some 70,000 Chechen refugees in Ingushetia. However, the real figure is higher. Many people leave Chechnya in winter and rent private accommodation, rarely visiting their relatives in Chechnya. These people are not registered anywhere, although they run away from the war as well. The official figures include those who get humanitarian aid from international organizations and who have been registered by the local police.

(T)