For Russian activist, Putin helps Assad, forgets fleeing Syrians
Moscow (AsiaNews) – Svetlana Gannushkina heads the Citizen's Assistance Committe (Grazhdanskoe Sodeistvie). A veteran refugee advocate in Moscow, she has been shortlisted for the Nobel Peace Prize several times.
“Russia’s support for the Syrian regime does not extend to its people,” she said recently. “The friendship between Putin and Assad is dangerous, like all in cases where political leaders come to agreements without taking into account the needs of their people.”
For months, her organisation has denounced the situation Syrian migrants face in Russia, where almost no one is ever granted refugee status. In fact, getting political asylum is harder than obtaining Russian citizenship.
On Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Russia to free asylum-seekers from Syria held in custody awaiting deportation and pay them compensation for violating their rights.
According to the ECHR’s website, the court ruled that Russian authorities had violated articles 2 (right to life) and 3 (prohibition of torture and of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights when it ordered people to be sent back to Syria.
According to Citizen’s Assistance Committee, only two Syrians have successfully obtained asylum. For others, the main path to follow is to apply for a one-year temporary asylum, but getting that means submitting to Kafkaesque red tape, high level of corruption and business sharks who make money on illegal immigrants.
"About 2,000 Syrians have temporary asylum, but according to my estimates about 10,000 are entitled,” Gannushkina said. “Official figures show that there are 12,000 Syrians in Russia. Compared to Europe’s numbers, that is small change.”
Those who come from Syria on a regular visa do not find any openness with the authorities once their permit expires. "It seems that Russia has two different policies,” the activist said. “The Foreign Ministry grants visas knowing full well that people will ask to say,” and,” despite some recent softening, “the Federal Immigration Service will reject” their applications.
Although Russia signed the Geneva Convention, Russia simply does not recognise refugee status. At the end of 2014, only 790 people had been granted asylum. They include 300 citizens of the Ukraine – officials like deposed President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the Maidan Square revolt, and members of Ukraine’s Berkut special police force involved in the repression of the protests in Kyiv.
"For a country like ours, 790 is nothing,” Gannushkina noted. “In fact, it would be better to have no one. At least we could simply say that we have opted out of the Geneva Convention and that we had no refugees and will have none.”
Most of the time, the Immigration Service refuses to grant asylum because it considers Syria’s war as a simple anti-terror operation and migrants are therefore deemed economic.
Without the right papers, no one can work, and without work, there is no money to pay for the right residency papers. Without the latter, hundreds of families are in vicious cycle, living at the margins of the law without access to health care or education for their children.
This is the case of Mohamad Ammaneh, 30, from Aleppo. Since he arrived in Russia with his wife, the couple has had two children. They live in Noginsk, a town two hours by train from Moscow that is home to most exiled Syrians.
In 2014, he turned to the Citizen’s Assistance Committee for help to get legal status with the help of the organisation's lawyers. "I thought that Russia was a friend of Syrians. That is what they always told us. But I was mistaken,” he said. “In two years, I have not received any humanitarian aid or income from Russia, which is still unwilling to recognise us as refugees. I want to go anywhere but here."
For a year, Mohamad borrowed money to stay alive. Now he has no money, neither for rent nor to pay for his children’s passports. Syrian authorities demand US$ 400 each. "I even sold my computer. Now I don’t have anything. In a few days, we’ll be in the street.”
For Gannushkina, such a situation brings many dangers. “Such lawlessness leads to corruption, slavery and violence and is dangerous not only for immigrants but for the state as well."
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