The campaign conducted recently against illegal immigrants in Russia, resulting in arrest of about 3 thousand migrants, has given rise to various interpretations. They mostly relate Russian operation against illegal immigrants with political phenomena. Some politicians believe that Russia using the immigrants may always send some kind of “message” to those countries that attempt to divert from Russian influence. Almost all developed countries periodically try to clean up from illegal immigrants, but Russia does it in very rough, humiliating method, at least Russian human rights defenders state it, who have described the methods of the operation as a human rights violation. “The issue of those living illegally happen not only in Russia, but throughout Europe, especially in Western Europe from time to time, there are so-called “refugee hunters”, there are huge campaigns, they collect them and take to special camps, then after checking sent the majority to their countries, deport them. The interesting thing is that such things happen a lot more in developed and financially stable countries, because they have the means to send them back, and, for example, in less developed countries, particularly in Spain, illegal people are not paid much attention, because they are not able to send them back. A few years ago, when a huge number of gypsies moved from Romania and Bulgaria to France, Sarkozy sent them all back with rather rude manners, of course, with a compensation, but human right defenders raised a lot of noise,”- said the Chairman of Helsinki Committee of Armenia Avetik Ishkhanyan in the conversation with “Aravot”. According to human rights defender, we can assume what is happening in Russia these days, what political subtext it has, but, according to him, if we compare the conduct of Russian and European with the migrants, in Russia, as a rule, it has been more rude and without taking the international norms into account. To note that during the illegal immigration operation in Russia, about 3 thousand representatives of different nationalities have been arrested, the location of the most of them is even unknown, in fact, there are Vietnamese and residents of the CIS countries, including Armenians.
To this respect, we did not listen any statement from our authorities at the state level as to how many illegal Armenian immigrant are arrested, who they are and where they are located. To our observation, the human rights defender said that if the ‘hunting’ of illegal people is launched, RA Embassy to Russia and Consulates should be the first to be dealing with the case of protecting our compatriots, even without waiting for the instruction from RA Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As for humiliation of our fellow citizens and protection of the rights, Mr. Ishkanyan thinks that weak countries would not dare to make any claims in such matters. “Whether it is offensive for the nations of different countries, of course, it is. Why don’t they complain, it does not concern only Armenia, why do not Vietnam, and Tadzhikistan complain? They are weak countries, therefore, only the issue that the citizens of other countries in forgetting and violating their dignity, live in another country for a piece of bread in the status of the second person, already shows that these countries are not quite established, they do not think about their citizens, and do not have dignity to protect their citizens.
Should the authorities of Armenia have dignity, they would first create such a country that the refugees would not be at least that much, and the migration would not continue. In that case, they would have the right to protest, but there is another issue: should the state have dignity and be strong, it would not treat its citizens as such. Saying a weak country, the territory and the number of population of the country is not so important.” According to the human rights defender, Russia really has leverages over weak, having no dignity and corrupted countries, and as an example, the human rights defender brought an event that took place many years ago. “When an aircraft was hijacked in Tadzhikistan that was suspected of transporting drugs, and a lawsuit was to file in Tadzhikistan, Russia demanded its citizen back, and Tadjikistan wanted to sue. At that time, Russia at once started to send Tajik immigrants back, a crisis was to start there, so they had to meet the request of Russia.” According to Mr. Ishkanyan, the Armenian migrants in Russia are one of the vulnerable sides of our country. “If more Armenian are living in Russia than in Armenia as of today, Armenian authorities generally have no way to speak. To say that the authorities are weak, because of them thousands of people emigrate to Russia, and to rely that Russia must treat well to our citizens, is a delusion. We must first demand everything from our government. But in any other country, people treat well to other nations when they have an established country back. More we talk about human rights, there are always, as they say, more equals among equals.”
Nelly BABAYAN
