Following the forced shutdown of one refugee camp in Ingushetia, displaced
people in two others fear they will be the next to be sent back to Chechnya.
By Timur Aliev in Bela Camp, Ingushetia (CRS No.159, 12-Dec-02)
Two hundred displaced Chechens - who fear they are about to be sent home to
the war-torn republic against their will - held a spontaneous demonstration in
the Bela refugee camp in Ingushetia on December 11.
The protest follows the forced closure of another tent camp in Ingushetia
and the eviction of its residents on December 1 - despite statements of concern
from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, UNHCR, and human rights groups.
The demonstrators at Bela, which is near the border with Chechnya, had been
expecting the arrival of Russian liberal deputy Boris Nemtsov. But he did not
come and instead they heard the assurances of Asu Durdurkayev, an official in
the pro-Moscow Chechen administration in Grozny.
Durdurkayev assured the refugees that only those who had signed documents
confirming that they wished to return would be sent back to Chechnya. He told
them that 500 refugees in another camp had already applied to go home.
He was echoing the words of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who had told
a meeting of Presidential Commission on Human Rights the previous day that he
would review the situation in Ingushetia and suspend the closures.
But human rights activists and refugee leaders say nothing has changed on
the ground and that more camp residents - most of whom have been in Ingushetia
since the beginning of the second Chechen war in 1999 - are being pressured to
return against their will.
Ruslan Badalov, who runs a Chechen human rights organisation in Ingushetia,
told IWPR that several lorries are already been parked outside the Bela and Alina
camps - ready to transport displaced people back to Chechnya.
"Russian policemen are going round the tents and demanding that the Chechen
refugees 'get back home in a decent manner'," Badalov said.
Thirty policemen are employed at the Bela camp under the command of interior
ministry official Pyotr Panasyuk. According to Badalov, Panasyuk has told refugees
"I have an order to liquidate the camps by the end of the year. And I will carry
it out!"
"First, refugees are forced or persuaded to write a statement asking to return
and then those who have signed are threatened, to force them to leave for Chechnya
as soon as possible," Badalov claimed.
Another human rights organisation, Moscow Helsinki Watch, said that all the
heads of the camps in Ingushetia had received a warning from Magomed Latyrov,
head of the republic's migration service, notifying them that it would be "impossible"
for refugees to go on living in the camps from December 21 because all funding
will end on that date.
According to Imran Ezhiev of Helsinki Watch this meant that the lease of the
land for the camps would run out and their gas and electricity would be cut off.
"In the first place people will be obliged to leave the territory of the camps,
since by law they cannot live on other people's land," Ezhiev said. "Secondly,
they will be left without heat and light in temperatures of minus 15 centigrade."
Russian officials have consistently said that they would not forcibly deport
refugees back to Chechnya. Ingushetia's president Murat Zyazikov made the same
assurance to IWPR in an interview in September (see CRS 149.)
Zyazikov repeated the message when he visited Bart camp on December 7, telling
residents there they were only being invited to return voluntarily. "If conditions
for normal life are created in Chechnya, then the refugees can begin to relocate,"
he said.
However, the Ingush president also suggested that the camps' days were numbered.
He said that the refugees should begin to choose where they wanted to live - in
private homes in Ingushetia or in "temporary settlement centres" in Chechnya.
Yet worries over the safety of the region remain. "As long as there are federal
soldiers in Chechnya, we won't go back there," one woman told Zyazikov.
While the Ingush authorities estimate that there are around 68,000 displaced
Chechens in their republic, the Danish Refugee Council puts the number at 110,000.
Until recently, around 20,000 of them were living in tents, with the rest in private
homes.
The Russian authorities have made it clear several times this year that they
wanted to see the camps closed. This would reinforce the official message that
Chechnya is returning to normality, and that fighting has ended there.
But their less than subtle attempts to evict the refugees have only succeeded
in generating even worse publicity for the authorities.
In October, Ingush and Chechen officials set December 20 as the date for closure
of the camps. Since then, refugees claim they have experienced intimidation and
threats from soldiers and police asking them to leave - and promises of financial
compensation if they agreed to go back to Chechnya.
The Iman camp, near the village of Aki-Yurt, was officially shut down on December
1 despite the protests of international organisations and western governments.
According to the Danish Refugee Council it had been home to 1,760 people and was
equipped with resources such as a sports hall, a medical centre, a psychological
rehabilitation centre and a sewing workshop.
By December 4, all the tents had gone. The local authorities said many of
the refugees had resettled in nearby housing. But human rights activists dispute
this. "The bulk of them - those who had the least - were taken away on buses to
their former places of residence in Chechnya," said Elisa Musayeva of the Memorial
organisation in Ingushetia.
"What's more, the driver who took them said that he dropped the last family
at a house without windows. And winter is now beginning."
The refugees committee of the pro-Moscow administration in Grozny reported
that 10,000 refugees had volunteered to go home.
Yet Memorial visited the "temporary settlement centres" where most of the
displaced people were supposed to live - and concluded they were not fit to receive
them. Monitors claim that only six of the ten centres are habitable - and that
those living there did not have their security guaranteed.
"The main thing for the bureaucrats is to make promises," said Musayeva. "They
just need people to leave the camps."
At least one family from the camp has already returned from Chechnya to Ingushetia.
"They told us here that some temporary accommodation was being made ready for
us at home but there wasn't anything," said Ruslan Khatsigov.
Timur Aliev is a freelance journalist based in Nazran, Ingushetia.