“Program of voluntary repatriation” is the official name of the proposed practice of paying money instead of granting refugee status. According to the Interior Ministry, this amount should be sufficient for refugees to travel home and restore their housing destroyed during military operations in Chechnya.
As expected, the chances of Chechens obtaining asylum in the Czech Republic turned out to be zero, reports Delovaya Praga. Since no war is officially being waged in Chechnya at present, there are no grounds for granting refugee status, the Czech Interior Ministry believes.
The head of the Interior Ministry's refugee affairs department, Tomas Hajsman, told a correspondent of the newspaper Lidove noviny that over the entire period of the conflict in Chechnya, only 8 people have managed to obtain refugee status in the Czech Republic due to the war. European Union states generally do not grant asylum to Chechen immigrants. “People were simply misled by information about a greater chance of obtaining refugee status in the Czech Republic than in Poland,” he said.
Not everyone in the Czech Republic agrees with the interior minister's proposal. Some rightly fear an influx of asylum seekers hoping to get at least a few thousand dollars, while others demand a stricter review process for applications and a reduction in financial support for refugees. The compromise proposed by the Interior Ministry is supported only by the Czech Catholic Charity organization. The non-governmental organization People in Need also opposes sending refugees back to Chechnya.