137) An Unknown "Deportation"

Russia considers them illegal


28 Feb 2003 02:03
Fifty years on, Stalin's last victims want to go home

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By Oliver Bullough

NIZHNEBAKANSKAYA, Russia, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Kocho Gasanov has 12 medals, a scarred scalp and a mangled foot to prove how he fought to defend the broad plains of Southern Russia against Hitler's invading armies.

The grey-bearded veteran is also unwelcome in this rural province near the Black Sea that he once helped defend.

Gasanov is a Meskhetian Turk and his people -- down to the three-year-old peeping round the door with her huge dark eyes -- are still paying for Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's decision to deport them en masse in the last days of World War Two.

"We still do not understand. We fought for Stalin and then he threw us out. Why did he do that? The young men were all away at the front. He deported a defenceless people," said Gasanov, veering between Russian and Turkish in his anger.

Stalin, who died 50 years ago next week, accused the Meskhetians of collaborating with the Germans and had them herded into railway wagons for the month-long, wintry journey to Central Asia.

During his four-decade rule, Stalin uprooted millions in a brutal re-engineering of Soviet society which by then made up the world's most expansive empire.

But the Meskhetians -- originally from the west side of Georgia just across the border with Turkey -- are one of the last peoples deported by Stalin to remain in exile, denied the all-important internal passports and access to state services.

"They said that we sold out our homeland to the Nazis, but how could we have done? The Germans never came to Georgia," Gasanov said.

Ethnic violence in the last days of the Soviet Union drove them into a second exile, and 13,000 ended up in Russia's southern Krasnodar region.

There too, they have been caught up in ethnic politics.


ANTI-IMMIGRANT RHETORIC

The Krasnodar region governor has played up anti-immigrant issues and the Meskhetians say they are frequently harassed by police.

"You can work out whether an immigrant is illegal or legal from his surname...Surnames that end in -yan, -dze, -shvili or -ogli are illegal and so are the people who carry them," governor Alexander Tkachyov told local reporters.

Those endings are typically Armenian, Georgian and Turkish.

The United Nations, on the other hand, considers Meskhetians Russian citizens and has expressed grave concern over the local government's behaviour.

But while Russia considers them illegal, the government in their Caucasus homeland of nearby Georgia says it has no room for them.

Ethnic clashes have been rife across Russia since the Soviet Union collapsed 11 years ago, with darker skinned immigrants from the Caucasus frequently the target.

But the Muslim Meskhetians say they may be immigrants, but not by choice.

"We are a good people, we don't drink, we work hard, why should it be like this?" asked Sarvar Tedorov, who heads the Meskhetian civil rights group Vatan.

The Krasnodar government refuses to legally register the Meskhetians, saying they should move back to Georgia.

Denied legal registration, the Meskhetians are effectively refused state housing, benefits, medical care, state-owned land and passports. They cannot travel abroad or even around Russia.

It also leaves them open to bribe demands from police, who can arrest anyone without correct papers.

"It's worst for the children. They have no passports, and cannot get certificates when they finish school," said Vatan activist Murad Chukadze, 45.

"Registration is like air, you cannot live without it. We are effectively being kept under house arrest," he said, sitting at a traditional low table spread with teapots, cake and nuts.

The majority live on small-holdings with a few cows, chickens and sheep, but maintain their traditions with brightly coloured wall hangings, floor cushions and endless cups of tea.


SOME EMIGRATION TO TURKEY, GEORGIA

Some of Krasnodar's Meskhetians have emigrated to Turkey, and others have gone to parts of Georgia, but most insist they want Russian citizenship before deciding where they will live.

"We are not saying we want to go to Georgia. We want our rights and then we will decide. I can go or stay, that is for me to choose," said Tedorov.

War veteran Gasanov, who alone in his family possesses a Russian passport as a reward for his role in the war, says he will not move back to Georgia until his whole people can.

"I would never go back as an individual. I would only go back if all the others who were thrown out were allowed back also," he said.

Russian media speculated that Washington could offer the Meskhetians asylum after a U.S. delegation visited the Krasnodar area and Meskhetian activists last year.

U.S. officials would not comment on the suggestions, and most observers say such an offer would offend the Kremlin.

No other country was likely to have the clout to pressure Moscow into finally forgiving the Meskhetians for a crime they never committed, Tedorov said, and Stalin's malign legacy would continue to overshadow his people.

"Stalin may be dead," he said. "But Stalinism lives on."

© Holdwater
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