Chechen refugees want their status resolved

Holding up her blistered hands, Aniese, a 43-year old Chechen widow, told IRIN that despite earlier being a well-paid laboratory technician, she is now forced to pick potatoes in market gardens outside Kazakhstan's commercial capital, Almaty. Waiting patiently in line for a twice-monthly food handout from a Kuwaiti charity, she knows it means the difference between feeding her four children and letting them go hungry. According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are over 12,000 Chechen refugees in Kazakhstan. The government says there are many more, including rebel soldiers. Aniese uprooted her family in 1994 when the Russians came and the Chechen capital became a blazing killing ground. Troops entered Chechnya to prevent Grozny from seceding from the Russian Federation. In the pandemonium that ensued, tens of thousands of civilians were killed and over 500,000 people displaced in the ongoing conflict. Many of those refugees made their way to Kazakhstan to seek out friends and relatives. The vast Central Asian country has proven a sanctuary for Chechens in the past. When Stalin deported Chechens en masse during World War Two, claiming they were Nazi collaborators, it was to Kazakhstan that they were relocated. Thousands of Chechens currently live in Kazakhstan, many under very harsh conditions, living on handouts like Aniese. Lack of employment opportunities and an absence of appropriate accommodation seriously undermine the well being of these proud people. Their plight has not been helped by the government's reluctance to recognise them as genuine refugees. The Kazakh government wants to remain on good terms with Russia, and invokes the Minsk Convention stipulating a visa-free regime in former Soviet states. In short a convenient way of ignoring a refugee problem. Instead they are granted a 45-day permit, that has to be continually renewed. This means that Chechens are not entitled to seek asylum in Kazakhstan, effectively denying them access to jobs, education and health care. "It's a major issue for UNHCR here, but we are making some progress with the government, although funding is holding this process back," Abdul Ghoul, head of UNHCR's liason office in Almaty, told IRIN. Ghoul's office has been trying to get the national asylum proceedure in Kazakhstan extended to groups like Chechens and Chinese Uighurs but said UNHCR may have to resort to third country resettlement as the only alternative to ensure protection of such vulnerable groups. Chechens say their situation has deteriorated since 11 September, with the stereotype of Chechens as terrorists or religious extremists being portayed regularly on television and in newspapers. It has opened the door to harsh treatment from Kazakhs and arbitary arrest and assault by law enforcement officials, refugees claim. "You are stopped in the streets by police here, detained, asked questions, we have no rights here, the children cannot go to school, its so hard to live, we cannot get proper work," Elza Kungaeva, another refugee waiting for food told IRIN. She added that her husband's Chechen passport was seized by police in Almaty and the photo ripped out in front of him, as he was bundled off for being illegal. In a crackdown this week, the state news agency reported that more than 7,000 "foreigners and stateless individuals" had been arrested in a special police operation. "Out of this figure, 3,654 CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] nationals and 196 non-CIS nationals have been deported from Kazakhstan for violating the rules for staying in the country," the Interior Ministry's public relations department told the Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency on Wednesday. Powerless and stateless, many Chechens have now turned to organisations like Vainakh for support. Originally a cultural organisation, most of its time is now spent representing the growing number of Chechen refugees in the commercial capital. Ahmet Muradov, one of Vainakh's programme officers and a refugee himself, told IRIN politics was getting in the way of refugee assistance. "My house is ruined in Grozny, there's nothing there for me. All we want is to be recognised under international law as refugees."