CHECHNYA LINKS LIBRARY

Last winter in Ingushetia

Timur Aliyev, special to Prague Watchdog

"All of them must be back in Chechnya by March 4!"

During a meeting with Migration Service officials and camp directors in December, Chechen Moscow-backed leader Akhmad Kadyrov said that he received a command from Moscow to conclude the process for returning refugees to Chechnya.

According to eyewitnesses, Kadyrov told the participants in the meeting: "Those who do not wish to return home are the murderers and criminals. They harmed the interests of Chechnya and that is why they prefer to sit in the tents. If someone doesn’t want to return home, he will be expelled by force - and I´m not afraid to say this. Cut the tents with knives, act unceremoniously. Make them go home. I will provide you with all assistance necessary, even special police or military units if needed. I will use all the force at my disposal. I claim responsibility for everything - be they either good things or bad things."

A UN representative at the meeting asked him: "Are you going to claim responsibility for the forcible return of refugees?" Kadyrov replied: "I claim 100 per cent responsibility for everything that will be done there."

The UN representative asked another question: "Can you provide the returnees with security guarantees?" And Kadyrov answered: "What kind of guarantees do they need? I'm not able to guarantee my own security. Perhaps I'll die tomorrow. I will not give any guarantees to anyone."

Then Kadyrov literally ordered: "I want them all back in Chechnya by March 4. Let me be absolutely clear on this so you can’t say you didn’t understand me. This job has to be completed and everything necessary has been prepared for it - vehicles and other equipment have been already allocated by the Southern Federal Region."

Human rights defenders are convinced that such statements will not change the current situation. "The refugees will not simply pack up and leave the camps, and so there may well be conflicts," said Taisa Isayeva, a member of SNO, an umbrella organization of Chechen NGOs based in Ingushetia. "The authorities are not interested in the refugees; they just want the tent camps dismantled."

Refugee or Rebel?

In 2000 there were about 20,000 refugees in the tent camps; the Iman camp in the Malgobeksky district was closed in December 2002 and the Bella and Alina camps were shut down at the end of last year. Currently there are three major camps in Ingushetia: Satsita, Sputnik and Bart, housing about 4,600 refugees.

The refugees feel that the main obstacle is the security situation in Chechnya, as well as lack of appropriate housing. The Public Council of Refugees ("Obshchestvenny sovet bezhentsev") prepared a draft appeal stating that "hundreds of families have been recently deprived of refugee status in Ingushetia and because they have no documents confirming their stay in the camps, they will be in danger after returning home as at any time they could be accused of being rebels.”

"We would like to return home and live in peace with our children, but unfortunately we don’t have this opportunity. Many of us have nowhere to go and no work to return to," the statement continues.

According to Adlan Daudov, a member of the Public Council of Refugees, another problem, which has to be solved as soon as possible, are tremendous food ration arrears. In some camps people haven’t received their portions for 14-18 months. ”People don’t want their humanitarian aid to be taken away by dishonest officials," he says.

Refugees refuse to accept the accusation of being "henchmen of rebels who don’t want to return home because of previously committed crimes."

"We are no bandits, no terrorists, no wahhabis and no criminals. We are common Chechens who lost everything - our houses, relatives and friends and our homeland. Yet all means are being used to make us "voluntarily" return to Chechnya: bribery, promises, persuasion, even explicit intimidation and blackmail," the statement reads.

Where to go?

Human rights defenders say the accommodations being offered to the returning refugees are unsuitable. The human rights organization Memorial explains that most of the temporary accommodation centers (TACs) are in a state of disrepair and not adaptable for permanent living. “The health of the resettled people may be endangered if they stay in these homes too long.”

"None of the eight new TACs were heated at the beginning of winter and the same applies to most of the existing ones. The new centers have no water supplies or reservoirs for drinking water. In many the water from barrels intended for technical use is used for drinking and cooking. All TACs have electricity, but the voltage is very low, and although gas is supplied it is often shut off without any warning; and a sewer system is non-existent in all the new centers," Memorial reports.

However, Zhadayev says it is not always easy to get into these centers. Despite many vacancies, some of the people were turned down; yet upon a “suggested” payment of $100, accommodations suddenly became available.

Ingushetia is trying hard to prevent the refugees from staying any longer. For example, at the Troitskaya village, the leases in three temporary refugee homes have been cancelled and the Migration Service will not extend these agreements. Epidemiologists are being sent there to point out the alleged unsanitary conditions there. But according to Zhadayev, these experts admitted to being told that under no circumstances were they to come up with a positive evaluation.

He said the former head of the Ingush Migration Service, Ivan Pomeshchenko, who is now the head of the Moscow working group of the Migration Department of the Russian Interior Ministry, personally issued instructions to legally evict the refugees should they refuse to leave.

The Migration Service officials as well as other authorities not only use threats but promises as well. Malika Suleimanova said that Chechen district administration heads arrived in the Sputnik camp and promised to provide accommodation for the returnees either in their TACs or empty houses. "However, the people are in no rush to return - who would want to live in somebody else’s house when the landlord could return at any time," she remarked.

Money is yet another way of trying to attract the refugees; those who choose to return are promised financial compensation for their destroyed homes. However, they look distrustfully at such offers. Refugee Apti Saraliyev says that so far he has not seen one single person receive this money.

Yet some refugees do comply and return to their homeland. According to the Chechen Refugee Committee in charge of repatriation, about 2,000 people voluntarily leave the camps each month. Every day the committee provides 10 - 12 trucks for the transfer, allotting one truck per family.

According to the Ingush Migration Service, there are approximately 50,000 registered refugees in Ingushetia. In Chechnya, there are about 16,500 people who have been accommodated in 28 temporary accommodation centers.

(O,H/J,T)