Central Asian Security Services ‘Feel at Home in Russia,’ Khamroyev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 7 – Political relations between Moscow and the governments of the countries of Central Asia may vary, but “the special services of the countries of Central Asia feel themselves at home” and work closely with Russian security services to oppress people from the region that either Moscow or their home governments don’t like, Bakhrom Khamroyev says.

            That represents a threat in the first instance to those who come to Russia for work or who are fleeing from oppression at home; but in the longer term, it means that these ties will make it even harder for the peoples of Central Asia to fight against and ultimately overcome the authoritarian regimes in their homelands.

            Khamroyev, who is currently awaiting trial in Moscow for an entirely legal one-person protest there against the Tajik government’s jailing of its political opponents, says that he is doing what he can to expose these links in order to defend the rights of his nation at home and in Russia (yenicag.ru/pravozashhitnik-specsluzhby-stran-cent/295379/).

            He has set up the Assistance legal aid center to provide assistance to Tajik and other Central Asians in Russia. It is registered with the state and is entirely legal, but, Khamroyev notes, he and it have been subject to attack both by Tajik security service officers operating in Russia and by Russian security officers as well.

                Central Asian migrants in Russia, because of the pathetic state of civil society there, have few means of defending themselves and, apart from his group, no collective means. There are individual lawyers who work in this sphere, he says; “but their efforts cannot be called coordinated and mostly migrants have to represent themselves by themselves.”

            In the course of the interview, Khamroyev makes some intriguing comments about conditions of Central Asian migrants in Russia. “First of all,” he says, “there are no ghettos in the classical sense in Russia now. This term is a scarecrow from the lexicon of xenophobes.” The authorities consciously oppose their formation to undermine ethnic identity.

            They block the construction of mosques, they close non-Russian language schools, they put obstacles in the way of those who wear hijabs or study national languages, and they deport Central Asian activists.  All this and similar measures “do not promote ghettoization,” despite the claims of some Russians.

             Moreover, the Tajik rights activist continues, “migrants are seeking to adapt themselves to Russian society, especially the children” who are learning Russian and Russian norms.  But what is striking, Khamroyev says, is that often Russian officials are more frightened of Russian-speaking and Russian-adapted Central Asians than it is of those who are less integrated.

            Indeed, he says, it is often these integrated people who are at the top of the list for deportation back to Central Asia.