Russia deported 153 citizens of Georgia on Friday as a wave of punitive measures against Georgian migrants and businesses grew, prompting criticism that the government is engaged in an ethnically motivated campaign of harassment.
The deportations came at the end of a week of political and diplomatic conflict between Russia and Georgia that began with the arrests of four Russian military officers for espionage and that has shown little sign of easing despite the officers' release.
The police, who had already begun to shutter some businesses linked to Georgians, searched and closed still more on Friday, including two more casinos and two of Moscow's better-known Georgian restaurants, according to accounts of officials and news organizations.
PHOTO: AFP
At least some schools in Moscow received requests from the police to list students with Georgian names, presumably to help in identifying illegal immigrants, prompting a complaint from an education official, Lyubov Kezina.
And one of the country's most famous writers, Grigory Chkhartishvili, a Georgian native who writes under the pseudonym Boris Akunin, told a radio station that tax inspectors had questioned his publisher about his income from his hugely popular novels.
Yuri Dzhibladze, an ethnic Georgian and president of the Center for the Development of Democracy and Human Rights in Moscow, described the authorities' actions as an unjustified overreaction to political disputes with Georgia's president, Mikhail Saakashvili.
"It smacks of racism and xenophobia," Dzhibladze said in a telephone interview.
Russian officials have cited legal or procedural violations as justifications for their actions, accusing the operators of casinos and restaurants of violating health or other regulatory standards and the deportees of breaking immigration laws.
"Everything that is taking place today is exclusively within the framework of the law," the prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika, said on Friday, Interfax reported.
Officials' remarks, however, have left little doubt that they have singled out Georgians for enforcement.
Mikhail Tyurkin, the head of the country's migration service, said on Thursday that all future work visas for Georgians would be "eliminated."
"Our analyses showed that today we do not need to attract Georgian citizens," he said.
In the wake of last week's arrests, which provoked an ominous war of words between the countries, Russia severed transportation links to Georgia, effective Tuesday, and has vowed to restrict postal service and money transfers.
The steps against Georgians in Russia have coincided with two new campaigns announced this week by President Vladimir Putin. On Wednesday, he proposed sweeping new restrictions on gambling. A day later, Putin called for new regulations of migrant workers, especially those in wholesale and retail markets, which he said were controlled by "semigangs, some of them ethnic."
Using some of the most strikingly nationalistic language of his presidency, Putin said markets should be regulated "with a view to protect the interests of Russian producers and population, the native Russian population," according to the Kremlin's transcript of his remarks.
It is not clear exactly how many Georgian citizens live in Russia, though some estimates run as high as a million. Like many citizens of former Soviet republics, they come to Russia to work, often temporarily, sending money home to support their families.
The Georgians deported on Friday were detained over the last several days in what officials have described as a sweep of illegal migrants. Viktor Beltsov, a spokesman for the Emergency Services Ministry, said that 153 deportees were flown to Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, aboard a ministry airplane from an airfield just outside of Moscow.
The campaign against Georgians has been echoed in television and newspaper reports that have indulged in stereotypes and lurid descriptions of Georgian mafias and criminality.
At the same time, however, the authorities have come under unusually sharp criticism in other parts of the news media.
"Searches in restaurants, closed casinos, threats of deportations looming over hundreds of thou-sands of people," a commentator, Demis Polandov, wrote in the newspaper Gazeta on Friday. "If this is not an ethnic cleansing, then I do not have a word to name it."
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
‘SHORTSIGHTED’: Using aid as leverage is punitive, would not be regarded well among Pacific Island nations and would further open the door for China, an academic said New Zealand has suspended millions of dollars in budget funding to the Cook Islands, it said yesterday, as the relationship between the two constitutionally linked countries continues to deteriorate amid the island group’s deepening ties with China. A spokesperson for New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said in a statement that New Zealand early this month decided to suspend payment of NZ$18.2 million (US$11 million) in core sector support funding for this year and next year as it “relies on a high trust bilateral relationship.” New Zealand and Australia have become increasingly cautious about China’s growing presence in the Pacific
RSS