Over the past two months, cases of persecution of Tajik migrants and students in Russia have become more frequent. Experts assume that this is due to the growth of xenophobia in Russia and, possibly, migrants being forcibly recruited to the war in Ukraine.
Dilshod Rakhimov has spent the last eight years in Russia as a labour migrant. In all these years, the police never stopped or interrogated him. However, in early July, he was taken to the police station by officers of the Federal Security Service (FSS).
According to Rakhimov, he was working with other Tajik, Uzbek and Kyrgyz migrants on the construction of a school building.
He told CABAR.asia that police arrived at the site in the afternoon and detained only the Tajik migrants.
“Among us, only three people had problems with their documents, and almost 40 others lived and worked legally, including me. They could have checked our documents right there, but they delayed for two days, making us spend time in the police station,” Rakhimov said.
His three companions were told they had two options: they would be deported and banned for five years for lacking a patent and residence permit, or, if they agreed, they would be sent to fight in Ukraine to redeem themselves.
Mass detentions and persecutions of Tajik migrants in Russia became more frequent in mid-May.
On 19 May, Tajik students from the Technical University of Komsomolsk-on-Amur were beaten by OMON officers in their dormitory. According to the students, the incident occurred early in the morning in the university dormitory when they were preparing to go to class. One of them said that OMON officers together with the FSS officers came to the dormitory, shut down the security cameras first, and then brutally beat the students.
“We were grossly insulted, documents were demanded, phones were taken away. The guys who were lying on the second tier of the bed were thrown to the ground. Then they built us up in the corridor of the dormitory and insulted us again, using foul language. Those who were saying something were being beaten more than the others. All of them were armed and the guys did not understand what was going on. Some guys were even struck with stun guns,” said an aggrieved student.
In mid-May, residents of the Kotelniki district of the Moscow region recorded a video message to President Putin in which they complained about the aggressive behaviour of migrants. According to local residents, migrants organised clandestine trade, regularly violated traffic rules, behaved aggressively towards local residents and their children, and formed an organized crime syndicate.
The media simultaneously published videos of mass detentions of Tajik citizens.
The Tajik authorities were forced to react to these facts. On May 24, the country’s Foreign Ministry held a meeting with Russian Ambassador to Tajikistan Semyon Grigoryev.
“At the meeting, the ambassador was informed of the Tajik side’s concern about the incoming information about mass detentions of citizens of the Republic of Tajikistan on the territory of the Russian Federation under various pretexts,” the Tajik Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The meeting also discussed in detail the incident that took place in the morning of 19 May in a dormitory in Khabarovsk Krai, “where more than a hundred Tajik students were interrogated and ill-treated by Russian law enforcement agencies”.
“It was emphasised that such incidents do not comply with the spirit of Tajik-Russian strategic partnership and alliance and may damage the efforts of the parties to further develop cooperation in the field of education,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and the Tajik Embassy in Russia have demanded that Russian authorities fairly investigate the pressure on Tajik migrants and students. However, the Russian authorities have not officially commented on the facts of the persecution of Tajik citizens.
The situation with Tajik migrants was also discussed on 5 June during the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Dushanbe.
“We always discuss this topic in the direction indicated by the presidents. We almost always accept amnesty requests for migrants. The last amnesty for migrants was two years ago, I think 120,000 people were pardoned, regardless of whether they had administrative offences,” the Russian Foreign Minister said at a meeting with journalists.
However, the situation of migrants did not improve in June. The raids and detentions continued even after Lavrov’s visit. In particular, according to media reports, all St Petersburg police stations were packed with Tajik migrants.
Tajik female migrants say that they are also being checked and detained. Firuza works at the Sadovod market. In mid-June, she was taken to the police station with other women. According to her, during the 12 hours that she was at the police station other groups of migrants were also brought there.
A CABAR.asia interlocutor says that police officers behave equally rudely with men and women.
“I have heard that when migrants without residence permits and patents are taken to the police, they are offered an easy way to obtain Russian citizenship – going to Ukraine. But I have not heard such words myself,” Firuza said.
Social media speculated that Russia wants to use migrant labour as leverage against Tajikistan to force it to join the EAEU. Prior to the visit, Lavrov also expressed hope that Tajikistan would join the EAEU.
“We hope very much that our Tajik hosts who are providing this hospitable territory will soon see its advantages of joining the Eurasian Economic Union,” the Russian minister said.
However, the Head of the Tajik Foreign Ministry’s Department of Information and Press, Shohin Samadi, stated on 8 June that the authorities are not currently considering the country’s possible accession to the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).
A Tajik economist, who requested anonymity, said the issue of Tajikistan joining the EAEU is not that important to the Kremlin because “the Tajik economy is not that big.”
“Of course, Tajikistan’s accession to the EAEU will give Moscow some leverage to control imports from China, which are also transported to Uzbekistan. However, Russia, especially now, is unlikely to harm relations with China because of this,” the economist said.
In his opinion, the facts of persecution of Tajik citizens are connected with the strengthening of chauvinism and xenophobia in Russia.
“As it turned out, Tajik migrants turned out to be the most vulnerable and that is why the brunt of the attacks fell on them,” the expert believes.
However, migrant rights defender Muhammadjon Sobirov disagrees that “only Tajik migrants are inspected and detained».
He sent CABAR.asia several photos from the detention centre for foreign nationals in the city of Engels, Saratov Oblast, and said that groups of Uzbek and Kyrgyz migrants were also brought to the police station.
“I am now in the city of Saratov and came here at the request of the Kyrgyz Embassy in Russia to talk to the detained Kyrgyz migrants. Ten Kyrgyz migrants are being held in a special detention room for not having a patent,” he said.
Sobirov says that checks and detentions of foreign migrants in Russia are not a new matter, but this year, unlike the last one, these events cause celebre in the light of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“I remember that in February 2022, before the hostilities, Russia conducted such inspections. At that time, up to 20 people were coming to our office every day to get help in legalising their stay in Russia. There is nothing new in it for human rights activists. But this year in the courts, migrants are being offered to take part in Russia’s war against Ukraine and obtain Russian citizenship for themselves and their families, or else they will be expelled from the country,” the human rights defender said.
He said that despite the fact that Tajik authorities had demanded that their Russian counterparts fairly investigate the pressure on Tajik migrants and students, nothing had changed.
Tajikistan’s Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman) Ahad Sodiqov told CABAR.asia that their Russian counterparts have not given an official response to their request for a fair investigation of the detention of labour migrants.
Abdukhalim Gafforzoda, a member of parliament and chairman of the Socialist Party of Tajikistan, suggests that the persecution of migrants may be intended to attract them to the war in Ukraine. Russian politicians have repeatedly said migrants should be sent to war in Ukraine, referring to “Tajik battalions”.
However, Tajikistan considers the participation of its citizens in wars outside the country a crime, Gafforzoda said.
“Those who have Russian citizenship are free to go [to war], but those who have dual citizenship or are stateless cannot be involved in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Regarding Tajik citizens, Russia has no moral right to send them to war. They face imprisonment for these actions in Tajikistan,” the deputy added.