Human rights activists set up staff for monitoring of resettlementTimur Aliyev, North Caucasus – A group of human rights activists in Ingushetia in recent days set up a staff for monitoring of the liquidation of tent refugee camps in Ingushetia and the repatriation of Chechen refugees.
The activists said that the new body’s objective is to hinder representatives of federal authorities from carrying out illegal actions against displaced people from Chechnya.
The staff was established within the framework of the International Committee on Refugees, which includes many non-governmental organisations from Chechnya and Russia that deal with the issues of displaced people.
The staff will be stationed in one of the camps and it will always have a lawyer on duty as well as several activists from Russian human rights organisation Memorial, the Chechen Committee for National Salvation (ChKNS), the Society of the Russian-Chechen Friendship and other organisations.
“On Tuesday, [Russian President] Vladimir Putin gave his assurances to the Moscow Helsinki Group chairwoman Lyudmila Alekseyeva in the Kremlin about the purely voluntary nature of the repatriation of refugees from Ingushetia to Chechnya. If illegal activities keep occurring in the camps irrespective of these assurances, they can be explained only by the excessive eagerness of local officials,” says Usam Baysayev of the Ingush branch of Memorial.
At the same time Pyotr Panasyuk, deputy director of the administration of the Federal Migration Service of the Russian Interior Ministry, reckons the return of refugees has been proceeding without violating any laws. “I and my colleagues are merely helping people return back home – we secure cars and provide food for them,” he says. “They leave the camps on their own accord.”
According to data provided by the headquarters for the return of displaced people, which are headed by Panasyuk, 98 people returned to Chechnya on December 12, and altogether 1800 refugees left Ingushetia between November 21 and December 12.
“For the migration authorities the main thing is that the refugees leave their camp,” says one of the founders of the staff, ChKNS chairman Ruslan Badalov. “But they don’t care where the people go from there,” he adds.
Panasyuk does not deny that the capacity of temporary accommodation centers (TACs) is not sufficient at present. “At the moment, there is only one [center] that is ready – for one thousand people,” he says.
“Eighty per cent of people in the tent camps would leave immediately if there were TACs ready for them in Chechnya,” Panasyuk claims.
Neither can Panasyuk guarantee the safety of those who return to Chechnya. “In case some soldier gets drunk and shoots... ,” he says without finishing the sentence.
As for the human rights initiatives, Pyotr Panasyuk believes that “human rights activists frighten the refugees by their actions.” “When none of them is present at a camp, people are ready to leave. But as soon as they appear, the refugees start to refuse to return,” he explains.
Panasyuk accuses human rights activists that “the presence of refugees in the camps is profitable for them,” because “that’s what they get money for.” “But at the same time they alone live in normal houses; they cannot realise what it is like to live in tents,” he asserts.
In response, Chechen human rights activists decided they are ready to move into tents if the migration authorities allocate some to them.
(D/T) |
