Children drawn into Russia's crackdown on Georgians

AFP ^ | 10/06/2006

[Republicain]

MOSCOW (AFP) - School children are the latest target of a Russian crackdown against ethnic Georgians in the wake of a spy scandal, Moscow officials said, as rights groups warned of "outrageous" discrimination.

Alexander Gavrilov, spokesman for the Moscow city education department, said that police had issued an order for schools to provide the authorities with lists of students with Georgian names.

"There is such an order in some schools. The education department is aware of this," Gavrilov said Friday, adding that his department strongly opposed the measure.

The measure follows the closing of Georgian-owned restaurants, casinos and other businesses in Moscow, a sweeping crackdown against illegal immigrants, and the severing of all air, sea and land links between Russia and Georgia.

Kremlin officials say they are punishing Georgia for the arrest and brief detention of four Russian army officers on spying charges at the end of last month.

However, human rights groups and political analysts describe the escalating pressure against Georgians of all types living in Russia as resembling a racist campaign.

"They claim these measures to be based on the law, but they are clearly being selective and the result is ethnic discrimination," said Galina Kozhevnikova from the non-governmental organisation Sova, which monitors xenophobic crime.

"It's outrageous. I can't say how strongly I feel about this. It's shameful and I can't understand why our leadership does not realise it's shameful."

The Kommersant daily quoted an unnamed senior police officer as saying that the listing of ethnic-Georgian school pupils would help track down parents residing in Russia illegally.

"It's easiest to do this through the children, who study in schools regardless of whether their parents are registered in Moscow or pay taxes," the officer was quoted as saying.

But Gavrilov, at the city education department, indicated there was strong opposition to the order. "Children studying in Moscow schools are the same, regardless of their ethnicity," he said.

The interior ministry would not confirm the report.

Russian officials have been unanimous and fierce in their reaction to Georgia's arrest of the four officers, alleged to have been members of the military intelligence unit GRU.

Analysts believe the crisis is rooted in Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's resolute attempts to break Russian influence in his impoverished ex-Soviet republic by applying to join NATO -- and Moscow's equal determination to prevent this.

Even before the spy scandal, Georgian-Russian relations were in a state of near constant tension, mostly over Georgia's claim that Russia supports separatist rebels in the two Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

However, the crackdown on the estimated one million Georgians living in Russia, many of them believed to be here illegally, introduces the politically explosive issue of race and immigration.

President Vladimir Putin himself signalled this new emphasis on Thursday when he gave a speech denouncing "rackets" and the "chaos" in Russia's big food markets, and urging tighter visa controls over "foreign citizens breaking our Russian law."

Georgians and other groups from the fertile agricultural regions of the Caucasus often dominate trading in Russia's markets.

Also on Thursday, the deputy head of the migration service, Mikhail Tyurkin, announced tougher immigration measures, saying that "Russia's regions do not need Georgian citizens."

"There is a policy of uniting people around the Kremlin in the face of a common enemy," said Vladimir Pribylovsky at the Panorama think tank.

"You could make that enemy the Jews, but that would cause problems in the West. The Chechens, or Russia's own Caucasians, are not convenient either, because there are too many of them and that might encourage separatism. So they found the Georgians."

[Hoplite]

"There's only two kinds of people I hate: Those intolerant of others because of their nationality, and Georgians." - Vladimir Putin

[kinoxi]

"There is a policy of uniting people around the Kremlin in the face of a common enemy,"

[Freelance Warrior]

The article lacks the info why the lists of students were demanded. I'd like to expand on it. According to the Russian law, secondary education should be avilable to all children no matter they reside in Russia legally or illegally.

The effect is that children of the illegal aliens study in government schools. The police is going to check the parents papers according to the lists.