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Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2003. Page 3 The Moscow Times Refugees Under Growing Pressure to Go Home By Timur Aliev Special to The Moscow Times   Timur Aliev / For MT Photo: An overview of the Bella refugee camp in Ingushetia. Officials say 700 of the camp's 900 residents want to go back to Chechnya. BELLA REFUGEE CAMP, Ingushetia -- Abubakar Dasayev, a 38-year-old former construction worker, moved to the Bella refugee camp from the Bart camp two months ago to care for his ailing mother. Last week, Bella director Lyuda Latyrova ordered him to pack up and return to Chechnya. "She came with the police and said: 'Your tent is unfit for living in. You have to leave tomorrow,'" Dasayev said. Dasayev's tent is in need of repair. It has several fist-sized holes in the roof, and Dasayev's three sisters place buckets under them each time it rains. Still, Dasayev would rather stay in the old tent and tend to his mother than go back to Chechnya to settle in the village of Sernovodskoye, where the authorities have offered him accommodation. Dasayev said if all Ingush refugee camps are closed as promised by Oct. 1, he would rather move with his mother and sisters to the Ingush capital, Nazran, as sporadic violence continues to plague Sernovodskoye. However, Ingush authorities are refusing to let him settle in Nazran and urging him instead to return to Chechnya. Dasayev's story is far from unique among the estimated 53,000 Chechen refugees remaining in Ingushetia. While Dasayev remains at Bella for the time being, other refugees also are facing similar pressure to pack their bags -- and some have relocated from camps to garages in an attempt to duck below the authorities' radar screen. The pro-Moscow Chechen administration recently vowed that all Ingush tent camps would be closed by Oct. 1 -- in an apparent attempt to get refugees to return to Chechnya before the republic's presidential election Oct. 5. Authorities insist that no refugees will be forced to go home against their will and say lodging will be provided in Ingushetia for those who wish to stay. But by all appearances, refugees are being given little choice but to go to Chechnya or face living without a roof over their heads. Complicating matters, several dozen refugees who went back to Grozny this month found that promised accommodations were unready and had to spend a night or two on the streets. [Photo: Dasayev, 38, posing with his mother at the Bella camp.]   Eliza Musayeva, head of the Ingush branch of the Moscow-based Memorial human rights organization, said the expulsion of refugees from camps is gradually -- and worryingly -- becoming systemic. "I don't understand what the Chechen government is hoping to achieve. "Do they think they can just horde the refugees into Chechnya and then let this all fade away without any news reports?" Musayeva said. Bella refugees said local authorities had announced that the camp would be shut down Aug. 9. While the camp remains open, they fear that they will eventually be forcefully expelled. Aset Khamadagova, who has been living at Bella since it was set up in 2000, said the acting head of the Ingush migration service, Ivan Pomeshchenko, recently warned refugees: "We will break your will." Pomeshchenko's deputy Akhmed Parchiyev met on Aug. 7 with Bella residents and pointed to a hill across the nearby Ingush-Chechen border, saying, "We want you to be behind that mountain." "If you don't leave before Aug. 8, you will be removed at gunpoint [so quickly] that you won't be able to put your slippers on," Parchiyev told the refugees, according to Khamadagova and other Bella refugees. Khamadagova and several other refugees refused to take the remarks in silence and lashed out at Parchiyev. Khamadagova said that a few days later she was visited by a police officer who threatened to open a criminal investigation into hooliganism. The Ingush migration service, however, denies putting pressure on the refugees and said it has set no deadlines for closing camps. Pomeshchenko said in an interview that one of the first things he did after being named acting migration service head six months ago was to tell subordinates that those who pressured refugees would be fired. "If a single complaint is filed, that person will be fired," he said. He did not say whether any complaints have been filed. Asked about the refugees' allegations over his and Parchiyev's comments, he did not reply and instead complained that human rights activists were stirring up discontent among the refugees. Pomeshchenko said 700 out of Bella's 900 residents have applied to return to Chechnya, making it "economically unfeasible" to keep the camp open for the rest. He expressed bewilderment about the Chechen administration's Oct. 1 deadline for closing camps, saying Chechnya cannot possibly accommodate all of the refugees. [Photo: Khamadagova, center, said an official told refugees they would be moved at gunpoint.] Alaudin Khisimikov, a senior official in the Chechen administration's committee on refugees, said, however, that regardless of where the refugees go, the camps have to be closed because the tents are in  tatters. Bella's tents are in particularly bad condition, he said in an interview in the Ingush village of Sleptsovskaya. He said a total of 10,000 refugees in Ingushetia have asked to return home so far. Ingush migration officials said 53,000 refugees were living in Ingushetia as of Aug. 14, including 10,000 in camps. The rest were living with friends and relatives or renting apartments. Meanwhile, refugees like Aslan Magomedov, 28, are trying to find a way to stay in Ingushetia. Magomedov resided at the Bella camp but recently moved with his family to a nearby garage in what he said was an effort to escape pressure to return to Chechnya. Shortly after the move, a police patrol arrived and forced him and his family to go back to the camp. But by the time they returned, their tent had been torn down. Magomedov said he had no choice but to move his family into the cramped sports hall of a local school, where 40 other families were already living. "Who knows how long we'll be allowed to live in the school," he said. "Children will return to school soon, and they will need the sports hall."