Uptick in Russian authorities' harassment of migrants politically motivated

ALMATY -- Russian authorities are ramping up harassment and deportations of migrant workers to advance their own political goals in the run-up to the September elections, say human rights activists.

The country is holding provincial and municipal elections that month.

Russian authorities launched the first phase of Operation Nelegal-2023 (Illegal Alien-2023) June 19-25, expelling some 7,000 migrants, the Interior Ministry (MVD) announced in July.

They opened criminal cases against more than 2,000 foreign citizens, it added.

Those charged are accused of illegal stays in Russia, drug and weapon trafficking and illegal crossing of the border.

A second phase of the operation is set to take take place October 2-8, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported.

Russian authorities deported 130 Kyrgyz citizens from Moscow city and Moscow province as part of the operation, RFE/RL's Kazakh service quoted Manas Zholdoshbekov, a counsellor at the Kyrgyz embassy in Russia, as saying.

Scapegoats

"This summer migrant workers in Russia are at risk of suffering increased repression by law enforcement agencies, which need scapegoats [for] misery in the country," Valentina Chupik, a rights activist, told Caravanserai.

The government is "starting a new wave of deportations in order to divert the Russian people's attention from the real problems in the country that have been caused by the war in Ukraine", said Chupik, who advocates for Central Asian migrant workers in Russia.

"Public dissatisfaction is building, and it needs to be directed somewhere or at someone," she said.

Chupik accused authorities of entrapping migrants.

Unidentified individuals are sending poorly translated messages in migrants' native languages to migrant group chats urging them to take part in anti-government demonstrations, according to Chupik.

This summer is a replay of the events of the summer of 2021, when Russian law enforcement agencies alleged that mass brawls among migrants were taking place, according to Chupik.

"There were actually just two fights, while the majority of documented incidents were falsified by the police," Chupik said. "This time it will be the same thing."

During that time, police searched detained migrants for messages on WhatsApp groups calling for them to fight.

The police then used those messages as sole evidence for having participated in "mass unrest", meting out a 15-day detention and deportation with a ban on entering Russia for 40 years.

"We're now seeing the same scenario with incitement," Chupik said.

Other analysts have said that the recent raids are politically motivated.

In the past few weeks, the Russian media space has been a forum for an "obviously organised" wave of supposed public discontent with migrant workers, accompanied by escalating searches of foreigners by the police, according to Sergey Abashin, a history professor at the European University at St. Petersburg.

In the run-up to September's provincial and municipal elections, the Russian authorities have set in motion a "surge in migrant-phobia" with the intention of demonstrating populist concern for Russian citizens, he said.

"The government has been using this tried-and-true tool for many years: first it incites hate for migrants, then it makes a show of punishing them, consequently releasing steam," Abashin told Caravanserai.

Furthermore, the migrant-phobia is fed by rising negative public sentiment, which is accompanied by attempts to find perceived culprits -- who generally turn out to be "outsiders", Abashin said.

'Enemies everywhere'

The intensified persecution and repression of Central Asian immigrants in Russia have affected migration outflows and shifted the direction of labor migration to Europe.

In recent years, Great Britain has become an increasingly popular destination for Uzbek and Kyrgyz citizens who are seeking opportunities to earn money abroad.

Last year, the United Kingdom issued more than 6,000 work visas to Uzbek and Kyrgyz citizens.

In a report published in April 2022, the Institute of Forecasting and Macroeconomic Research in Uzbekistan wrote that the United Kingdom and EU countries were among the most promising destinations for labor migration from Uzbekistan.

Anti-migrant sentiment in Russia is in turn greatly amplifying anti-Russia sentiment in Central Asia, say observers.

Lately the debasement of migrants in Russia and the widespread flagrant human rights violations have been sparking growing backlash on social networks, said Bishkek blogger Ulan Kadyrbayev.

Reports of such incidents arouse calls for cutting all ties with Russia and dropping out of the economic and military blocs that join the commenters' country to Russia.

"The Russian authorities themselves are doing everything they can to make even the most loyal citizens of the region [Central Asia]'s republics disillusioned with them: migrant workers, who have been living and working there for many years," Kadyrbayev told Caravanserai.

"They're looking for enemies everywhere, even though their main enemy is themselves."