Human Rights Center "Memorial"

Attempts to return refugees back to the Republic of Chechnya

In the autumn of 1999 hundreds of thousands of peaceful citizens, saving themselves from the war, fled to neighbouring Ingushetia. This small republic took these people, even though the flows of people increased with every day. The refugees found accommodation with whoever and wherever they could. Some stayed with relatives or acquaintances and others rented accommodation. For the remainder, tent cities were put up and railway rolling stock was settled. People were housed in state property: clinics, kinder-gardens, construction firms etc. There was not enough room for everyone. Premises originally housing animals (barns, poultry farms) were made available for accommodation. With the coming winter, the situation in the republic was close to a humanitarian catastrophe.

It became necessary to create structures able to manage the situation centrally. This happened with the orders of the President of the Republic of Ingushetia.

Enactment No134 dated 6^th October 1999: "Concerning the republican committee to provide help for the refugees from the Chechen Republic." And Enactment No160 dated 9^th November 1999, "Concerning the confirmation of the status of the republican committee to provide help for the refugees from the Chechen Republic."

The committee would deal with problems like the construction of compact accommodation for the refugees, the supply of provisions and food products and also the co-ordination of the efforts of humanitarian organisations, who by this time had begun their work in Ingushetia. Representatives of these organisations, who already had a great deal of experience in this type of work in other of the world's hot spots, repeatedly gave a positive assessment of the work done by the committee. None the less, order No. 48 dated 17^th May 2001 from the president of the Russian Federation stated that all powers concerning the co-ordination of the activities of state and international organisations in Ingushetia would be handed over to the "Territorial body of the Federation Ministry on the affairs of national and migration strategy" (MDFNM).

This, however, was a forced measure. The situation in the republic was turning out in such a way that any initiative by the committee of the Ingush Emergencies Ministry to improve the lives of the refugees is taken by the Federal authorities as an attempt to keep the people in Ingushetia. On the other hand, inertia could only have aggravated the situation. In both cases, the government of Ingushetia found itself in an "extreme" or "radical" position.

And so since the start of spring, the Federal Government again brought up the question of the return of the refugees from Ingushetia back to Chechnya. V. P. Kuksa, the minister of the Ingush Emergencies Ministry, said that according to all forecasts there would not be a sharp decrease in the number of refugees during the course of the year. Consequently, not only does re-emigration have to happen but also preparations must be made for the new winter. This is all the more so since the trend amongst the refugees to transfer from the private sector into the camps will develop and ignoring this fact could lead to unpredictable results. People are leaving the private sector for two reasons: those paying for accommodation are running out of means to pay and as is the patience of those who housed their relatives and acquaintances free of charge. The length of the war has many times exceeded human resources.

The camps are already overcrowded. According to preliminary forecasts, around 35,000 people have expressed their desire to leave the private sector, therefore this could happen at any time. Housing such a number of people would demand the doubling in quantity of places that are available in the camps in the republic. If the real situation would have been taken into account, these new camps should have been finished by now, but this would undoubtedly be taken by the federal government as an intention to retain the refugees.

V.A. Blokhin (head of the Federation Ministry) visited Ingushetia at the start of June 2001. In the course of meetings with the refugees he saw for himself that people do not intend to return home until there is a full cessation of war activities there. The minister gave instructions to the director of his department in Ingushetia to begin all the necessary preparations for the coming winter and he defined the main problems:

• The exchange of old and unfit tents (according to the facts from TO MF in the Republic of Ingushetia, this year it is necessary to change around 700-800 tents);
• To undertake necessary work on the infrastructure in those camps, which would be maintained

Regarding the question of the creation of additional places to house the refugees, the minister said it was not within his powers to take such a decision.

At the same time, refugees continue to arrive in Ingushetia. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees, in the month of May alone, 400 returned to Chechnya whilst 950 people left. The flight of the refugees reflects the situation in Chechnya: the slightest escalation in tension in the republic leads to an exodus of people. This is on top of the tension that has existed for an almost two year period of terrible arbitrariness from the military, without basic state-legal structures of defence from this which has become the background condition. People leave when life becomes unbearable. Today safety reasons have been added to social reasons for leaving; the situation within Chechnya is close to a humanitarian catastrophe, especially in remote regions. People are exhausted physically and morally; their means and resources of existence have been exhausted.

According to the latest facts, 148,000 refugees are registered in Ingushetia. The Danish Council for refugees leads its own accounts and has 150,800 people recorded as receiving humanitarian aid in Ingushetia. It is impossible to trace the changes in numbers in the official records because in the course of two months only, since April, nobody leaving Chechnya was registered. The Human Rights Centre "Memorial" sent an inquiry on 14^th May 2001 about the ending of registration of citizens of the Chechen Republic to the Ministry of Federation Affairs in the Republic of Ingushetia. A reply (No. 1207) was received on 25^th May 2001 signed by the head of the department, M. Gireev, stating:

"With reference to your inquiry No. 212-N dated 14.05.01, we announce that the Russian Federation Ministry in the Chechen Republic functions using the same regulations as in the Republic of Ingushetia. Citizens who have been forced to leave their place of residence can make themselves known there. Camps have been created, ready to house the refugees. Also, Form No.7 (the record of arrivals under emergency conditions) is out of date and does not meet the demands of the current situation of the refugees from the Chechen Republic. Due to the necessary change in format of the records, registration of the arrivals has temporarily been suspended."

The position of the Federation Ministry in this case responds to desirable but not real circumstances. On 16^th May 2001, Mustafa Sainovich Arsakhanov, an inhabitant of Grozny, turned to the consultation office of "Memorial" for help. Arsakhanov had left Chechnya at the start of the war with his family (four minor children) to go to the Novgorod region. He believed the news reports in the press that the war in Chechnya had finished and that for people who had lost their accommodation, places were now ready in special camps. And so he returned home, went to the regional department of the Federation Ministry in the village of Znamenskaya in the Chechen Republic, where it was well known that there were two camps for temporary accommodation. He intended to stay with relatives in the village and had no pretensions to living in the camp. When Arsakhanov asked to be registered and be given an allowance, he was refused.

According to the department of the Federations Ministry in the Republic of Ingushetia, re-registration is taking place. Only those having registration in the passport-visa regime of the MVD of the Republic of Ingushetia will be taken into account. On 1^st June 2001, the passport-visa regime of the Ingushetian MVD had processed the details of 137,500 people. This figure will increase as following an analysis undertaken by the department of the Federation Ministry, it may reach 146-148,000. After completing the re-registration of the refugees, the Federation Ministry will compile a database of the number of refugees in Ingushetia. This will then be handed out to organisations working with the refugees. Representatives of humanitarian organisations will use this, the only, database in future when providing aid in the camps so that the "[federal] government do not accuse the Ingush powers of feeding bandits." These fears are well-founded since these accusations have repeatedly been brought against Ingushetia and has been threatened with "cleansing" in the best case scenario and in the worst case, with conducting military action on its territory.

On 26^th February 2001, the government of the republic of Chechnya passed Resolution No.5 - "On measures for the preparation of Temporary Accommodation Centres (TACs) for displaced persons in the Chechen Republic."

In the town of Gudermes a republican committee was created to deal with preparations for the TACs and the return of Chechen citizens temporarily living out of the territory during the period of war and situated in the Republic of Ingushetia and other regions of the Russian Federation. The committee is chaired by Yurij Pavlovich Em, the vice-chairman of the Chechen government. A resolution will be taken in the last days of winter, since (as was mentioned above) in the forthcoming spring, active preparations will be made made to rehouse the refugees from Ingushetia to Chechnya.

Point 4 of the abovementioned resolution states: "The Republican committee on preparing the TACs and return of displaced persons should take measures so that the building of the TACs will be completed before 1^st July 2001." Point 6 of the same resolution obliges the heads of administrative regions and towns in the Chechen Republic to create conditions and take all appropriate measures for the return of the refugees in the course of a month.

It follows that by 1^st July 2001, there should be places ready in Chechnya to accept all the refugees and this is using the incomplete data of 150,000 people. The question then arises, that if the republic has the opportunity to provide accommodation and sustenance for such a number of people in "astronomical" time periods, why have hundreds of thousands of people been living all this time without roofs over their heads and living below minimal levels of existence in the towns and villages of Chechnya? Or are they just blights not deserving the attention of their own government?

It has not been stated in but in reality the question of the return of the refugees has its main accent on those living in camps and not in private accommodation. Evidently, the camps are an all too graphic consequence of the military activities in Chechnya and the attitude of the government of the Russian Federation to its own citizens which has caught the attention of international missions and foreign journalists.

Meanwhile, the process of remigration involves ever more new authorities.

On 25^th February 2001, a meeting took place in the town of Magas, Ingushetia, between A. Malsagov (Chairman of the Government of Ingushetia), and S. Ilyasov (Chairman of the Government of Chechnya), with the participation of A.V. Korobeynikov (deputy plenipotentiary of the president of the Russian Federation in the Southern Federal region). In the meeting they discussed the working out of a general plan on the return of the refugees to Chechnya.

At the same time, campaigners from Chehcnya began their work in Ingushetia. In the last days of March, M. A. Muguyev (representative of the committee for humanitarian organisations in government of the Chechen republic) organised the return of 74 families (around 300 people) from the "Bart" camp (town of Karabulak) to the TAC in the Chechen town of Argun.

In the middle of April, the Deputy Chairman of the Chechen Government, Yury Pavlovich Em came to Ingushetia. On his visit to the camps (in particular at the MTF in Karabulak) he didn't conduct any ???campaigning??? but explained to those wishing to return to Chechnya, how and where to hand in their documents.

In the middle of May, Yuri Pavlovich Em, deputy chairman of the Chechen government, visited Ingushetia. During his visits to refugee camps (especially the MTF camp in the town of Karabulak), he did not propagate return to Chechnya, but explained to those willing to return to which authorities they would have to present their documents.

In the middle of May, a delegation of Chechen authorities with Yuri Pavlovich Em at its head visited the "Bart" camp in Karabulak. This time they appealed to the refugees to swap their tents in the camp for rooms in the TAC in Argun and Gudermes in Chechnya.

In the course of monitoring, it was revealed that in the town of Argun there actually was well prepared housing for the refugees. However, far sightedley, those leaving for Argun left behind members of their family in Ingushetia in the event of a necessary return. Meanwhile, the 74 families who transferred to the TAC in Argun from the "Bart" camp in March, received a ration pack on the very first day which was to last for ten days. On top of this, they were assured that in the future they would be given money for products as standard, determined by the MDFNM which would be made up of 15 roubles a day. Ilyasov promised them that first of all they would be paid compensation for the loss of accommodation and property although the Russian government has still not passed a resolution regarding this matter.

On the same day when the refugees returned, a landmine exploded. After this, troops opened fire indiscriminately and began their hunt for the presumed terrorists. An innocent person was shot as a result. Thus all assurances of safety, the main condition demanded by the people returning home, was completely discredited.

At the same time the federal goverment continues in its policy of pressure.

For more than a month already, the Federation Ministry's order regarding privileges given to owners of private property who give it over to refugees has been cancelled in Ingushetia i.e. the payment of public utilities. The owner of one barn situated in the grounds of the MTF in Karabulak demanded that the refugees vacated premises belonging to him, where 157 people live.

At a meeting of the Chechen government in Grozny on 24^th May 2001, the maximum period of time the Chechen refugees should stay in Ingushetia was defined. The Federal Minister for Chechnya, Vladimir Elagin, announced that by the end of the year, the inhabitants of tent cities and other places of refugee accommodation would be brought back to Chechnya. This sounds like a threat and six months remain before the deadline runs out.