Human rights activists today equate Russia's treatment of refugees — frequent refusals to grant them appropriate status, expulsion to their historical homeland, and often handing them over to the intelligence services of the states they were forced to flee — with torture. The report "Expulsion and Extradition from the Russian Federation" by the human rights center Memorial, released last week, is being prepared as part of a common alternative report to the UN Committee against Torture. As Svetlana Gannushkina, the head of the "Migration and Law" program, explained, "What our country condemns refugees to, by denying them protection from return to a country where they face persecution, is akin to torture."
Russia's policy toward refugees is perfectly illustrated by statistics. According to data cited by Svetlana Gannushkina, in 1997 the number of people officially recognized as refugees and registered with the migration agency reached almost 240,000. In 2000, their number fell almost tenfold, to 26,000. In 2003, about 9,000 refugees lived in Russia with the status protected by law. But in 2004, there were 614 people. As of September 1, 2005, Russia counted only 548 refugees officially recognized by the Federal Migration Service. That is, over nine years their number decreased 400-fold.
"The sharp reduction in the number of refugees is partly due to their acquisition of Russian citizenship, but the majority were simply removed from the registry because they did not undergo the new status determination procedure adopted in the new version of the Law on Refugees," explains Svetlana Gannushkina. "But they did not disappear. They simply turned into illegal migrants with all the ensuing consequences, up to deportation to their country of origin, where they lost their property and where the threat to their lives remains." For example, the practice of "Migration and Law" includes the case of "Afghan children" who were sent by the communist regime in 1984 to study. While the children were studying, the regime fell, their parents were shot, and there was nowhere for them to return. Now they are no longer children, and they grew up in a secular country. Expelling them to a country where extremist anti-communist organizations are strong, in the opinion of human rights activists, endangers their lives. And the "Afghan children" trade at markets without the ability to work legally. And they hide from the police, even if they have started families.
Gannushkina notes that the reasons for deportation can be trivial; the main one is the lack of registration at the place of stay. The courts approach the issue formally, without going into the circumstances of the case. Moreover, since 2002 the Administrative Code has established a simple mechanism for getting rid of refugees. In 2003, more than 44,000 foreign nationals were deported, in 2004 more than 87,000, and in 2005 the number of deportees continued to grow, according to human rights activists.
This statistic certainly diverges from the declared statements by Russian authorities about their readiness to accept migrants. In practice, Russia easily gets rid of strangers and accepts "its own" with great difficulty. Equally contradictory is the recent news about the creation of an interdepartmental working group to develop a State Program to Facilitate the Voluntary Resettlement of Compatriots Living Abroad to the Russian Federation. The working group is headed by presidential aide Viktor Ivanov, known for the fact that when he began overseeing the work of the pardon commission, Russia for a time completely stopped pardoning repentant criminals.
Representatives of civil society who provide concrete assistance to migrants wishing to settle in Russia were not invited to the working group. "This is, to say the least, very strange," said Svetlana Gannushkina. "We are first and foremost specialists; we have been dealing with these issues for many years; we have highly qualified lawyers; and who but us should participate in facilitating the voluntary resettlement of compatriots?"