Iceland's recent request to Russia for a loan of €4 billion worried its northern neighbor, Norway. Immediately, there was talk that Reykjavik could become an ally of Moscow in the Arctic, including in the dispute over the status of the Spitsbergen shelf. The threat of Russian expansion in the north forced Oslo to act – a delegation was sent to Iceland tasked with negotiating Norway's participation in saving the island's economy from collapse. But suddenly it turned out that the threat to Norwegian interests on Spitsbergen comes from an unexpected side: the number of illegal foreigners on the archipelago is growing. Authorities feared that they could strike from within at the "Norwegian fortress" in the Arctic.
«Svalbard turned out to be more open than we assumed,» warns the governor of Spitsbergen, Per Sefland. «Foreigners arriving on the archipelago every year outnumber the Norwegians who have decided to settle in our parts.» Currently, about 2.400 Norwegians and roughly six hundred "Russians" – citizens of the Russian Federation and Ukraine working in the coal mines of the Russian settlement of Barentsburg – permanently reside on Spitsbergen. There is no exact statistics on other foreigners who have settled on the archipelago. It is assumed that there are about a hundred of them.
Trying to stop the flow of "conquerors of the Arctic" from Asian and African countries, but without violating the terms of the Spitsbergen Treaty, according to which Norwegian immigration law does not apply to Svalbard, Oslo has introduced a number of tightening measures. Thus, the governor received the right to deport from the archipelago persons without housing or a source of income. And recently, the practice of checking passports of people wishing to fly to the island capital – the settlement of Longyearbyen – from the North Norwegian city of Tromsø (the only line connecting the archipelago with the mainland) was also introduced. The last measure is aimed primarily at "people from nowhere" – refugees who have destroyed all documents on the plane on the way to one of the European countries. This method of deceiving the authorities has become widespread in recent years among asylum seekers, as it complicates their deportation to their homeland.
A number of Norwegian experts fear that the inhabitants of Spitsbergen may over time hold a referendum to revise the current status of the archipelago. After all, these outcasts of the world, who managed to reach Spitsbergen without documents and find work there, turned out to be forever locked on a patch of land in the Arctic. The archipelago is open only in one direction – for admission. Foreigners wishing to leave for the mainland must present passports with Schengen visas. Otherwise, they will be turned back from the airport.
Among the states wishing to undermine Norwegian sovereignty over the archipelago, Norwegians primarily include Russia, which has a permanent settlement on Spitsbergen and carries out coal mining there. The dispute is not only over the right to exploit the land territory of the archipelago (Norwegians are trying to limit Russian activity there by expanding protected areas), but also over the development of resources on the shelf. Norway asserts that the Spitsbergen shelf is not subject to the international treaty defining the status of the archipelago as a territory open to exploitation by all states. But Russia and other parties to the treaty dispute this position.
The most famous of the dozens of foreigners who have settled on Spitsbergen is the 50-year-old Iranian Kazem Ariaiwand, who opened the world's northernmost kebab shop in the island capital. «I came here five years ago after being denied asylum in Norway. I could not return home. And then I accidentally learned that anyone can settle on Spitsbergen. So I rushed here. It never occurred to me that there are more polar bears here than people. But nothing, I got used to it. The only thing is, I can't go anywhere – they will immediately detain me and deport me to Iran,» says the "polar refugee" in the pages of Norwegian newspapers.
A year ago, Kazem Ariaiwand bought a decommissioned American military truck, which turned into a kebab shop on wheels and quickly became a local tourist attraction. Western TV channels told about this case. The result of the "advertisement" was a flow of refugees who dreamed of repeating the feat of the kebab shop owner. «It is harder here than one might think,» says Kazem Ariaiwand about his followers. «Many last a week, at most two, and then go to surrender to the authorities. But I do not regret becoming famous all over the world. After all, we cannot live on the island as eternal Robinson Crusoes.»
Alexei SMIRNOV.
«Novye Izvestia»