HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES

Scores of Human Rights Watch/Helsinki interviews with refugees and IDPs, along with credible reports from Civic Assistance, the Memorial Human Rights Center and international organizations suggest that police perpetration of human rights violations in the enforcement of registration requirments are systematic enough to warrant the overhaul of the system. While registration rules do not, on their face, discriminate by race or ethnic origin, Moscow police continue to enforce registration rules on Moscow's streets in a clearly discriminatory manner, singling out people with dark skin and hair who appear to be from developing countries, the Caucasus, the Northern Caucasus or Central Asia for document checks.66 Interviewees told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki they were stopped anywhere from several times per week to several times per day, and of spending time in a police station at least once per week or per month. Police beatings are common, especially if the detainee disputes the validity or fairness of his detention with a police officer or attempts to conceal money. Moreover, police are afforded overly broad discretion in setting fines and collect fines in an highly arbitrary manner: they frequently do not issue receipts for fines collected, which suggests that the funds go to police pockets rather than to city coffers, and indeed the system of fines in many cases has generated a practice of extortion. Police routinely destroy refugees' documents, including UNHCR cards and MMS registration cards, and sometimes destroy visitors' registration papers.

The absurdities of the registration system allow for situations in which visitors registered in Moscow Region, for example, in a town fifty kilometers from Moscow, drive to the city, stay for a day and are fined for being in the city of Moscow without registration since they cannot prove when they arrived. Since many police officers collect the "fines" and do not issue receipts, an alleged "violator" cannot prove to the next police officer, who may stop him or her that very day, that he or she had already paid a fine.

The pattern of police enforcement has changed little since Human Rights Watch/Helsinki's 1995 report. Typically, police stop young men with dark skin (although they increasingly also stop women) and ask them for their documents to prove they are in Moscow legally. If the person has no such documents, he is either asked to pay a fine on the spot or taken to the police station, where he may remain behind bars (in the so-called monkey cage) from one hour to overnight, until the duty officer calls him and asks him to pay a fine or sign a police report. Police also conduct body searches to seek money for "fines." When detainees have no money for fines, it is not uncommon for police to ask them to perform chores at the station, such as mopping the floor or collecting the garbage.

Victims have developed "survival behaviors" to avoid police harassment: they avoid public transportation or going out of the house altogether; if travel around the city is necessary, they take a small child as an "insurance policy." They also avoid carrying money with them.

Some interviewees noted that occasionally police officers treated them with respect, acknowledged their UNHCR or other identification cards, or genuinely sympathized with their plight. While these policemen certainly deserve credit, they are clearly the exception to the rule of cruelty and abuse reported to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki in interviews with scores of victims.

Fining of People Awaiting Status Determination

Nearly every asylum seeker interviewed by Human Rights Watch/Helsinki who had been recognized by the UNHCR as a refugee and who had filed an asylum claim with the Moscow Migration Service (MMS) claimed that police routinely refuse to recognize the validity of their certification cards from the two institutions, and indeed that the police appeared to have no knowledge of these institutions. Police, they said, commonly described thesedocuments as "toilet paper," and "not a real document"; several reported that police claimed that the MMS was a private company that provided false identification papers. 67

Most African male interviewees reported that they had been stopped by police on the streets, at markets, or on or near public transportation and taken to the police department so many times since their arrival in Moscow that they could not begin to estimate how many such incidents had taken place. Afghan interviewees, male and female, reported that it was common to be stopped on the street at least once per day.68 "Abu," a Somali refugee from Mogadishu claimed, for example, that he was stopped about five times per week and spent time in a police station about twice per week.69

Citing five years of harassment, endless "fines" and beatings at the hands of Moscow city police, Akhmed Muhammed Ali, a refugee from Somalia, decided voluntarily to repatriate to Somalia in May 1997. The father of seven children, Mr. Ali reported that he had been detained an "uncountable" number of times, with most incidents resulting in a "fine." His unforgettable experience in January 1995 is worth recounting here.

According to his account, police detained him and two other Somalis near metro Belyayevo, in southern Moscow, around 11:00 a.m. and drove them for about an hour to the outskirts of the city. After arriving at a wooded area, the police searched their pockets, shoes and socks for money, found 70,000 rubles and abandoned them. Upon finding the money one of the policeman reportedly said, "Stupid blacks. Let's leave them here." He and his friend reportedly had to walk three hours back to Moscow.

When Mr. Ali arrived at a familiar neighborhood, a policeman stopped him and another Somali outside a shop:

I went to the store to buy bread. I had borrowed 20,000 rubles [from someone] I ran into by coincidence. There was a policeman outside the shop and he said, "Let's go." He took me to the station, and put me in a room for about ten minutes. When the duty officer called me he said "Put everything in your pockets on the table. He asked me to pay a fine. I said I had only 17,000 rubles and a loaf of bread. I told them what had just happened. They took the money. They checked all our pockets, they searched us and found nothing.

Somali refugee Abu completed medical school in Moscow in 1995 and applied for asylum. After the police beat him up in a passport check 1995, reportedly in response to his comment, "have you no conscience?" Abu never questioned police actions. He recalled the most recent brush with the police:

It was June 11 [1997]. I was at the Yugozapadnaya bus stop [in southwestern Moscow]. There were about forty people standing there. It was 5:00 p.m. Three policemen walked through the crowd and walked right up to me. [I showed them my MMS card]. They said, "That's not a document. You have no registration." They took my passport and sent me home to get 50,000.

Attempts to register

As stated above, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki believes that asylum seekers who are UNHCR-recognized refugees should be relieved of the need to register with the police under the conditions that currently prevail. The police registration process for asylum seekers is daunting and complex, and many refugees are poorly informed of their obligations, do not know how to register, or simply fear the entire ordeal because of abusive officials. Most of their landlords do not wish to register refugees because they fear paying taxes on rent income, or because they fear the consequences of housing a foreigner, especially a foreigner with dark skin. Even should these obstacles be overcome, police and other registration officials may refuse to register them on strictly arbitrary grounds.

A Somali refugee who had come to Russia in 1993, for example, had UNHCR and MMS cards; he claimed that he had considered registering but changed his mind after learning of the experience of another Somali refugee. This acquaintance attempted to register in summer 1996 at the central UVIR (Directorate for Visas and Registration), and was told there he would be registered only if he presented a return ticket and promised to return to Somalia. "UVIR doesn't recognize refugees.," he told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki.70

M.H., a thirty-six-year old Afghan refugee recognized by UNHCR, attempted to register in the Southern Administrative District of Moscow, but was told to go to the central UVIR, where he was told that he "didn't have the right" to register.71

"Aziz," a former general in the Afghan army, tried repeatedly to register in the Krasnogvardeyskii district. At the local housing committee he was asked on what legal basis he was residing in Moscow and in what apartment he lived. His landlady later informed him that if he insisted on registering he should find another apartment. The local housing committee had "harassed" her (he did not know the details), and she did not wish to pay taxes on income earned from the sublease. Frustrated by the incident and daunted by the prospect of finding another apartment, Aziz "dropped the whole thing."72

In July 1997 the central UVIR categorically and repeatedly refused to register Badin Galalia, a Kurdish refugee from Iraq. In July, after he was released from pre-deportation custody (see below) and attempted to register, UVIR staffers reportedly claimed that the UNHCR refugee identification card was illegal, ignored his MMS certification, and threatened to arrest and deport him. Upon learning that the procurator's office had no intent to deport, UVIR staff allegedly threatened to have him put on a criminal wanted list.73

Invasions of Privacy-Enforcement in Private Homes

In the first five months of 1997, Moscow police reportedly conducted 1.3 million checks in private apartments for compliance with registration of legal aliens from the CIS. During that period 112,588 individuals from the CIS had registered for temporary visits in private apartments. Hence, for every registered person in the housing sector police carried out nearly 119 apartment checks. Neighborhood inspectors, typically the agents to enter private apartments, discovered 63.4 percent of registration system violators.74

The Moscow Main Directorate for Internal Affairs (GUVD) maintains that police, including neighborhood inspectors, have the right to enter apartments without a warrant under the 1991 Law on the Militia and a Ministry of Internal Affairs order.75 Article 10 of the Law on the Militia grants police the right to unhindered entry into citizens' homes in order to pursue a suspect in a crime, in cases of accidents, and to "protect the safety of citizens and public security in times of natural disaster, catastrophe, and . . massive disturbances." Police must notify a prosecutor after each such entry. Checking compliance with registration regulations cannot be considered among these categories. The Ministry of Internal Affairs decree allows police to enter businesses and hotels on plausible grounds that a crime or administrative violation has occurred; it does not empower the police to enter private homes.

Human Rights Watch/Helsinki considers such apartment checks-in which police enter by force or with credible threats of force-an intolerable violation of the right to privacy guaranteed in article 25 of the Russian constitution and article 17 of the ICCPR.76

In some cases neighborhood inspectors, for a variety of reasons, including compassion, tolerate unregistered refugees in their neighborhoods. However, refugees reported to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that with increasing frequency police go to the homes in which refugees are known to live, asking to see documents and demanding temporary registration permits. Such visits force refugees to seek new apartments elsewhere for several reasons: because the police threaten to arrest them if they do not move; because they cannot afford to pay the bribes-typically of 50,000 - 100,000 rubles ($9 to $18)-that patrol officers extort from them; or because of general fear of the police. In many cases, neighborhood inspectors or patrol police, after repeated visits and threats, make an arrangement for a refugees to pay a monthly "tax" to them. It is not uncommon for asylum seekers from outside the former Soviet Union to change residences twice or three times per year.

"Rakiya," is a twenty-one-year old Somali refugee and mother of three.77 She has been awaiting a decision on her refugee application since 1995 and speaks fair Russian. While for months her neighborhood inspector accepted her Somali passport, UNHCR, and MMS papers as adequate identification and did not request to see proof of registration, around March 1997 a new neighborhood inspector took over her neighborhood, and her problems began. That month he knocked on the door and the residents, upon seeing through the peephole an unfamiliar police officer, did not answer; the police then began to kick the door. When the police left and saw several of the resident Somalis huddled in the kitchen window (the apartment is on the first floor) they reportedly shouted, "Chorniye [Blacks!] You're going back to Somalia!"

On April 1, a patrol police officer came to her home to check her documents. During his visit he attempted to grab her breast, and in the ensuing scuffle, hit her three-and-a-half-year-old son and accidentally stepped on his toe. Rakiya reported that the officer was at first "normal, not rude." Upon showing the officer her MMS certification card and her passport, the officer reportedly asked her where her husband was:

I told him my husband was not home and he grabbed me on my breast. He said,"you are beautiful and you need a man." He said it politely . .. I said, "Why are you touching me like that?" He said, "I love African girls [devushki]." I said, "I'm not a girl I'm a woman."

I shouted something at him in Somali and my son came out of his room and ran in front of me. He kicked my son and my son fell down . . . on his belly. He stepped on my son's toe . . . it was cracked and bleeding.

A scuffle then ensued, in which she hit the policeman in the face with her shoe, and the policeman responded by throwing her into a corner. Later that evening the officer returned with another policemen, presumably to arrest Rakiya, but her arrest was averted through the pleading of other residents of the apartment.

According to O., Rakiya's friend who helps her care for her children, but who does not speak Russian, three policemen returned four days later, when Rakiya was out, and searched the apartment for money. She told Human rights Watch/Helsinki:

It was around 10:00 a.m. The police [pulled up] in a jeep [the apartment is located on the first floor]. One of [the Somalis] opened the door and the police said, "Bring out the three kids and the two women." Three policemen and two Somali men sat and talked in one room, I kept the children in another room. Then they searched the room; They found 25,000 rubles in one of the suitcases and took it, but left [the Moscow Migration Service identification cards]. One of the Somali men [who speaks Russian] told me this.78

Constant police harassment forced Teresa, a Liberian asylum seeker with two children, to move twice in the eighteen months after her arrival in Moscow in January 1996. She recalled that during the winter of 1996-1997, when she was eight months pregnant, police came to her home in a hostel in northeastern Moscow. She produced her UNHCR card; she lacked an MMS card and registration with UVIR and had no money to pay a fine. Police brought her and her thirteen-year-old son to the station:

They put [us]in a prison cell and [we] stayed there for four hours. Then the big boss came and asked what we were doing. My son spoke a bit of Russian, and explained [the situation] to him. Then he left us. Then we paid 30,000 rubles. They kept my UNHCR card.

They came again after that, but I didn't want to go in the cell. They left us for three hours. They refused to let me sit down, but [I was pregnant]! They made us sit on the floor. I was so angry I refused to pay the fine. They didn't say where we should go to get the registration.79

In cases where neighborhood inspectors or patrol officers pay visits to the homes of refugees, they often appear determined more to extract a regular, monthly bribe than to compel refugees to comply with registration procedures. "Suleiman," a twenty-nine-year-old Somali refugee from Agissa, told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that in May 1997 the neighborhood inspector began a series of visits to the apartment in which he rented a room with two friends.80 In the first incident, according to Suleiman, he came around 9:00 p.m. and detained the landlady (who also lived in the apartment) and Suleiman's two roommates (he was not home at the time) and took them to the local station. He reportedly told them they had no propiska, were illegal, and would have to buy him vodka. The second time, he detained Suleiman and the others and told them they had ten days to leave the apartment. Suleiman told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki:

"[The inspector said] `I don't want you here. If I see you again I'll beat you up.' He didn't touch us, though. We spent three hours there. He wanted 300,000. We said we had no money, and he saw that we didn't have anything."81

During the third visit, on June 1, the inspector reportedly again threatened the Somali refugees and eventually exacted a bribe:

He told the landlady "you should rent to friends, to Azeris, other people. But not to foreigners. [Again] he said he wanted us to get out. We told him we had nowhere to go. One of us said, "let's talk," and they went into a room. Now every month we're going to give him 50,000 and he's going to leave us alone. He wanted more.82

In southern Moscow the neighborhood in and around Biryulova Street appears to be home to a large number of Somali refugees; Human Rights Watch/Helsinki received numerous reports from Somali refugees of police harassment in their homes there. Two weeks after Akhmed Muhammed Ali, a fifty-seven-year old Somali refugee, moved into an apartment there with four other Somalis, two policemen came and asked to see their documents. Their MMS cards, the police maintained, were worthless without a police stamp. They were taken to the police station, beaten and made to pay a "fine."83

When they returned to the apartment, a police order on the door forbade entry except to the owner; later, when the owner had returned, the Somalis attempted to retrieve their luggage. According to Mr. Ali "[The Landlady] paid the cops 200,000 and [said] that we had to pay 200,000. She said we had to get a note from the cops [before she would] let us in to get our luggage." Mr. Ali eventually retrieved some of his luggage.

"Mariam" is a Somali refugee with UNHCR documents and a mother of five children. Several weeks after she moved to an apartment near Biryulova Street in March 1997 police knocked at her door, pushed their way past her, checked her documents and inspected the rooms in a cursory manner. Seeing that she was eight months pregnant, and that she had four other children, they left without making demands. Soon after the birth of her fifth child, in April 1997, the same two policemen again reportedly forced their way into her apartment at 10:00 p.m., "fined" her husband 50,000 rubles (after first asking for 100,000), and hauled off three Somali men who had been staying with them.84

"Aziz" had managed to extend his foreigner's visa and registration for several years. He received refugee status from the UNHCR in December 1996 and registered an application for refugee status with the Moscow Migration Service. The Moscow Migration Service had not ruled on his asylum case by the time his MMS card expired in March 1997. Police stopped him every day on the streets asking for identification, sometimes four or five times per day, upon which he was automatically taken to a police station and fined for not having proper registration documents. Just before the May 1997 holidays, police stopped him in southern Moscow, near the Kakhovskaya metro station. At the police station he sat behind bars for about two hours; the duty officer then called him and "bargained" with him over the fine.

The Moscow city criminal investigative unit paid a night visit to "Guria," an ethnic Georgian from war-torn Abkhazia, at 12:30 a.m. in early May 1997. Two men in plainclothes carrying nightsticks and handcuffs announced they were conducting a check, and ordered Guria to pay a 84,000 fine.

The baby was still awake . . .They came up to our door and showed me their identification booklets, but I asked them not to come in because I have a small infant. I told them they, you know, don't have the right to come into the apartment, and that if it weren't for the baby I would ask them to come in. I didn't want to upset my wife so I just gave them [84,000 rubles] and they went away . . . They didn't give me a receipt.85

Occasionally police officers on "home visits" spare non-registered individuals fines. Iga Kokulia, who had been fined at least ten times at his home for housing unregistered guests, described a home-inspection incident in which the presence of women and small children in Kokulia's apartment apparently caused the police to refrain from fining the family.

Beginning in January 1997, the police inspector in "Nana's" neighborhood came to her apartment once per month to fine her and her brother and sister, who lived with her. On the first occasion, he pounded on the door at 1:00 a.m. "We didn't even want to open the door, we were frightened. He said, `Open the door or I'll break it down!' Now we pay him 151,000 rubles each, every month."86

Police Violence

In most reported cases of police beatings of refugees in their custody, victims attributed this to their having attempted to argue their rights or to explain their position. During raids of markets and dormitories for passport checks, however, police often apparently beat victims as a matter of routine.

M.H. told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki of an incident he observed around May 15 while in custody at the police station near the Sevastopol Hotel:

"There was a guy, an Afghan, who said he had registered and that he had a visa and that he was not going to pay [the fine]. They hit him on the head-on the side of his head and in the face. Then the cops punched him and used their nightsticks. We were all behind bars and we saw he had tried to protect himself. They put him behind bars.87

On May 20, 1997, police at a station near Biryulova Street beat a seventeen-year-old Somali refugee as he was on his way to school. Police picked up Abduraham Sadik, a UNHCR-recognized refugee who had an MMS certificate card, at 9:00 a.m. as he was waiting at a bus stop, took him to the station, beat him and kept him at the station until 8:00 p.m. He described the incident to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki:

The [police] at first drove past in their car. When they saw me they backed up. I showed them my MMS and UNHCR card. I'm under age, so I don't have a passport. . . They said, "those are not documents, pay a fine." I said I didn't have any money. The shoved me by the shoulder into their car. They said "Blackie [Chorniy], get in!" The people standing at the bus stop were all laughing.

They took me to the police station and put me behind bars. After three hours, I said, "I'm on my way to school! Let me out!" One cop came in and hit me in the face, first on the left side. I fell down. I tried to cover my head with my hands. Then another policeman came in and boxed me on the head. I said, "Why are you hitting me, what do you want?" They said, "Fuck you, shut up darkie." I took five or six blows to both sides of my head. They stopped hitting me when I cried.

My head is swollen, but there was no blood. When I fell I felt dizzy and almost vomited. Today I still feel sick and can't go to school.

They let me out only after the new duty officer came for his shift. The new duty officer gave me my documents and told me to sign something. I asked him what it was and he said, "Shut up, it's none of your business."88

"Guria,"89 an ethnic Georgian from Abkhazia, reported to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that passport checks were especially violent around the Shchelkovskaya metro station in eastern Moscow, near the Pervomayskoe department store; police who guard the store apparently also run frequent passport checks at the metro station. Perhaps the most egregious of these incidents occurred on January 7, 1997, the day his wife gave birth to their second daughter. Three policemen stopped Guria near the metro station and brought him to their headquarters inside the Pervomaiskoye department store:

They said, "Document check." They took my Georgian embassy refugee card and said, "come with us." [I went with them] to the department store. As soon as we went inside the store, they said to me, "You black-ass, what are you doing here? Stealing, right?" I said to them, "Why do you harass us like this?" When I said that one of them kicked me in the rear end. It was right there in the store, where the counters are. There were people everywhere. . . ." They called me a black-ass . . I was simply ashamed, I have my honor. When I said that they were harassing me, they said, "Now you'll see what harassment is," and started kicking me." I told them my daughter had just been born and asked them to let me go because I wanted to go to the hospital.

At the police room in the store the police put Guria in the "monkey cell," upon which he immediately tried to hide 100,000 rubles by rolling them up. When police demanded that he pay a 167,000 ruble fine, Guria claimed he had only 10,000. Police searched him, found the hidden 100,000 and beat him:

They put some piece of paper on the table and hit me in the face, and then a second cop came up and kneed me in the stomach, and a third started hitting me with a nightstick. They were all insulting me, "Why did you hide the money?"

The latest incident, near his apartment building, occurred on May 11:

They checked everything on me. They checked my veins to see whether I was a drug addict. I was ashamed since my wife and four-year-old daughter were watching from the window and saw how they smacked me around. Everyone was watching them check me. They threw me around and insulted me.90

Around May 10, police beat Iga Kokulia, an ethnic Georgian from Abkhazia, at a trolleybus stop. Kokuliya was waiting for a trolleybus and saw the police car approach from afar. He tried to run away, but the car caught up with him:

They said, "Where are we going comrade?" They didn't hit me at first, they tried to get money out of me. They put me in the patrol car. There were two [cops] inside. They started to threaten to take me to the station . . .and thought I would get scared and give them money. I said, "Please take me to the station!" I was sure that no one would beat me there, [that] there would be someone to talk to, the duty officer. At the station I am more or less protected from these creeps.

They started literally to thrash me, saying I was a hoodlum, a thief, a drug addict, that there were enough swindlers here [without] "black-asses" from Georgia. . . . They hit me right in the car, punching me and hitting me with a wooden nightstick. They hit me a few times in the head, but in the car it was [too small] to wave a stick around so they [stuck to] punching me.

The police searched Kokulia and took the 15,000 rubles they found on his person.

In early June, three policemen in Lyuberts, a suburb of southern Moscow, beat an ethnic Russian refugee from Abkhazia in a roadside police post. "Sasha" told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that he had been waiting at a bus stop in Lyuberts when police drove up at about 11:30 p.m.:

They asked for my documents and I gave them my passport. I had no registration. I tried to give them money through the window so they would let me go. They called me a creep and a good-for-nothing. They took me to the police post. They told me my passport was a fake. They didn't believe [I was an ethnic Russian]. The beat me on my legs with truncheons, and on my solar plexus. They stood me up on the floor and put my hands behind my back [in handcuffs] in handcuffs, jerked my arms upward and my head was below. It was the "lastochka."91

I said I wanted a lawyer. They said, "So you want a lawyer too? This isn't America for you to go calling a lawyer!92

When Human Rights Watch/Helsinki interviewed "Sasha" marks from the handcuffs remained on his wrists.

"Jamshed" lives in an abandoned railway car near one of Moscow's flea markets. An unregistered migrant from Tajikistan's Gharm valley, he and his friends paid a 50,000 ruble bribe on a regular basis to the neighborhood inspector. On April 28, a different inspector came around to check their documents, and when one of the Tajiks asked to be taken to the station instead of sorting things out there, Jamshed claimed, "The cop just leapt on him and started kicking and punching him, saying `How dare you talk like that!'" 93

At the police station, police searched them and reportedly told them to pay 300,000 rubles. "Some of us said we didn't have any money, explained Jamshed. "They started searching us one at a time. When they found money on us they would kick or hit us because we didn't hand it over right away. Me, I got punched in the chest."

Several days later, during the May Day holidays, two policemen reportedly came by between 12:00 and 2:00 p.m. and demanded 250,000 rubles from the entire group. One of the policemen beat twenty-eight-year-old Jumokul, another Tajik, causing him to be hospitalized. Jamshed told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki:

[Jumokul] said in Tajik, "Let's get the money together." For that, the cop punched him and he fell. First he punched him in the stomach, then he kicked him in the face, and he was wearing those lace-up boots. His eye was all closed up. It turned red, then black. When the policeman saw what happened he asked forgiveness and asked if he could drive Jumokul to the hospital. We said we would do it ourselves. When [Jumokul] got out of the hospital, he wanted to go to court, because he had a hospital certificate [documenting his wounds]. We told him not to because we have no voice here.94

Unusually, no money was taken in this incident.

Akhmed Muhammed Ali, who has both UNHCR and MMS certification cards was brought from his home to a station near Biryulova Street, where he was beaten and then detained for about six hours. Mr. Ali told Human Rights watch/Helsinki:

They told us to get dressed, . . . and when we went downstairs they drove us to the station. At the station they told us we were going to each pay a fine of 200,000. [The officers] said, "You are cheaters. You are living in this house for fifteen days. You have no documents and you are not supposed to be here. . ." Abati, [one of Mr. Ali's roommates] has a Russian girlfriend and speaks good Russian. He talked to the police. He said, "The owner of the apartment rents the apartment to us. We don't cheat on the rent!" Then they started beating us with sticks, they were black rubber sticks, and slapped us. They said, "Why are you coming here," and called us stupid blacks. This was in the reception room. Many other people were walking past, but they said nothing. They beat us for about seven minutes. There were five policemen. They were taking turns. Mostly [they hit us] on the head, but they also hit our elbows and stomach. Then they searched us. Whatever we had they took. We got there at 12:00, and the police released us at 6:00 p.m.95

The beatings of dozens of Azeris during market raids in July 199696 caused at least two individuals to be hospitalized. During the July 18, 1996 raid on the Cherkizovskii market, police beat at least ten Azerbaijani merchants and ripped up their registration documents.97 The Azerbaijani embassy in Moscow filed a complaint on behalf of nine victims with the district prosecutor's office. The prosecutor's office responded that police denied having beaten the Azeris, claimed that the procurator's office had "had no success" in locating victims in order tocomplete the investigation, and requested the embassy to assist in providing the necessary information to conduct a criminal investigation.98

Masked police conducted a similar raid at the Krasnogvardeiskii market on July 25, during which they destroyed 100 million rubles worth of fruits and vegetables, and hauled away the rest.99 Elgar Agakishiyev, Consul of the Azerbaijani embassy, told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that two days after the embassy received between twenty and thirty complaints of beatings and other abuse by Moscow police in this raid, "we found half [of the complainants] and took them to the procuracy. There they repeated the testimony they had given us. We always accompany [such people] to the police and participate in the questioning."100 When riot police raided the Shukinskii market on July 29, they beat and kicked Elnur Talybov badly enough to require emergency treatment. Emergency room staff reportedly refused to issue a medical report detailing the cause of his injuries upon learning that they were caused by police. 101

The Moscow GUVD's criminal investigations of both the Krasnogvardeiskii and Shukinskii market raids remain open.102

Other Arbitrary and Predatory Conduct by Police

Police use registration rules to harass and extract bribes from individuals transiting through Moscow from other CIS countries. However, Moscow's registration rules, old and new alike, exempt transit passengers-those who posess have tickets to prove they are merely transiting or who are at a station or other port of entry-from the registration requirement. In May, Zulfikor Shodiyev, a refugee from Tajikistan and journalist for the BBC, was helping a twenty-year-old acquaintance who was passing through Moscow en route from Kharkov, in the Ukraine to Tajikistan. Shodiyev and the man, whom Shodiyev identified only as "Komilov," took a taxi to the Kazan Station to purchase a ticket to Dushanbe. As soon as they got out of the taxi, by Zulfikor's account:

They were all standing there. I showed them my documents. They let me get out, but they took [hold of Komilov]. I told them I wanted to buy a ticket for him. The only identification he had with him was a certificate that his passport had been lost. They let him go. We went inside the station and bought the ticket. We went out, I wanted to show him to the platform. As soon as we went outside the police stopped him. I begged the [policeman]. I explained that he had a ticket. But he said, "No, he has a Kharkov propiska." They took him to the Kazan Station police room, but would not let mein. [For the next half hour] every time a policeman went inside he would ask what I was doing there and I would explain. After another half hour they let him out. He didn't give them any money, but they made him sign a police report that he had been in Moscow for a month with no propiska. They told him, "Your relative is a good person, that is why we're letting you go."103

"Aziz," a merchant at the Cherkizov Market, who asked Human Rights Watch/Helsinki not to reveal any detail about him, reported that he had been registered with the Moscow police. When he went for a visit to Tajikistan in 1996, he departed on the last day of his registration's validity. At the police checkpoint near Domodedovo Airport, police flagged his car. Police ignored the man's one-way ticket to Dushanbe, insisting that he pay 50,000. Not wishing to risk missing his flight, he paid.104

According to Moscow registration rules for foreigners, sanctions for failing to register apply if one fails to register with the police within three days of arrival in Russia.105 "Malik," an Afghani refugee, arrived in Russia via Tashkent, Uzbekistan in early 1997. Upon arrival at the Kazan train station, he attempted to hail a taxi to search for an apartment. The first car to pull up was a police car:

They opened the door and told me to get in. I said I need a taxi, not cops. They didn't say anything. They took me very far, far away. We must have been driving an hour and a half. We ended up somewhere on Ryazanskii Prospekt. It was 6:00 p.m. At the [police] department I gave them my documents, I showed them my ticket, my visa. I still had to pay 50,000 rubles, and I sat there for three hours! And they didn't write up a report.

In an extreme case of predatory policing, four different groups of police extracted "fines" from a Tajik man on May 6, the day he arrived in Moscow from Dushanbe. A thirty-seven-year-old man with five children, "Tahir" had spent 170,000 rubles on "fines" and had been taken to four police stations within twenty-four hours of his arrival. He was staying in a shack in the woods near the Cherkizovskii market along with eighteen other Tajiks. He spoke in detail of his first day in Moscow:

As soon as I arrived I went to the market to look for work. I went to stay in a very small place . . It's a bad place, dogs wouldn't live there. That night the police came four times. I took a loan from a friend to pay for food-120,000 rubles. They took it all. I didn't have any more money, so [for the next fine] I had to borrow 50,000 more.

The first time, we were drinking tea. Someone from the 65th police department came. He told us to stand up and looked at our passports. He said I had no propiska. I said I just arrived, that I had three days to register. I said I had a ticket. He said, "Your ticket doesn't concern me." He took my passport and searched me and took money. Then he gave my passport back.

The second time it was the same thing, except we just gathered up the money and sent them away. The third time they took us to the 78th police station, it was getting to be morning already. They said "Go back to your homeland, What are you doing here in Russia? Russia can't feed everyone!" Theyput us behind bars. They looked at our passports, took our money, then gave our passports back. They wrote up police reports for us.

Two of us walked back together and some police stopped in their car. They said we didn't have a propiska. I showed him my ticket. He said my twenty-four hours had gone by already. He said I was new so he fined me only 20,000.

That night a policeman from the 73rd police department detained us. He didn't take money. He just said, "This is no place for you. Go to your homeland!" At the police station I talked to the senior lieutenant. He let us all go and we didn't have to pay anything.

I came here to work! I taught math and physics in a high school for fourteen years. I spent 220,000 in fines so far and I haven't earned a penny.106

Non-Muscovites who obtain registration documents still are not guaranteed freedom from police harassment. Police target individuals with dark skin for identity checks, and frequently if they stop such an individual who does have registration documents, they refuse to accept the validity of the documents. The Moscow registration system is only partially on a centralized computer program; in most cases verification requires a telephone call to relevant police stations or housing commissions which are often difficult to reach.

If the police have reason to believe the registration document to be false, they may go to a station to run a computer check. In some cases the police, upon seeing a registration document claim it is false and demand a fine without running a computer check. In others, the enforcement of registration rules leads police arbitrarily to fine people who have legitimate registration documents on other grounds. "Irakli,"107 a thirty-four-year-old ethnic Georgian from Abkhazia who has lived in Moscow since 1994, claimed that in the summer of 1996 police on the Arbat-one of Moscow's most famous and popular streets-tore up his registration document and then demanded a fine:

It was in broad daylight. . . There were three of them. They checked us, I showed my [temporary] registration, and they took it and ripped it up and threw it away. They said, "Now you don't have registration. Let's go to the station, you're going to pay a fine." They started to say [all kinds of stuff] so I gave them 50,000 rubles. And that was it.108

Irakli recounted how the traffic police (GAI) in collaboration with regular police, detained and fined him on false grounds. In early April 1997, a GAI patrol stopped his car in the vicinity of Taganka Square in southern Moscow and began checking his documents. An officer from the Moscow Municipal Patrol then drove up:

He asked, "Who is this? No Moscow propiska? Take him." They took my documents and I had to follow them in my car to the police station. They took me to the police station, put me in the monkey cage. I sat there for three hours. Sometimes the duty officer writes you up on hooliganism, or drunk driving. . . Do you know what they wrote for me? That at 2:00 p.m. I-forgive me-urinated on Taganka Square. The duty officer showed me the report that the Municipal Patrol officer hadwritten, and it said that I had urinated in city center, even though I hadn't! They wanted me to pay a 18,000 fine. I refused, and the duty officer was very polite and let me go.

[Whenever I'm stopped] I always ask why they are harassing me. They say they have a plan. They give an example that each policeman has to catch, say, ten people in one day.

On an earlier occasion, in December 1996, police had flagged down Irakli's car near metro Babushkinskaya, in northern Moscow about 7:00 p.m. and detained him until 4:00 a.m. Although he could show that he was registered for temporary residence in Mozhaisk, a city in Moscow Region, Moscow city police officers refused to recognize the validity of this registration and did not give him the benefit of the doubt as to the length of his stay in the city. He described the incident to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki:

I was driving and they checked my car. The policeman [when he saw my documents] said, "What the hell did you come here for?" Then it was the same thing .. . They [took my documents], drove in front of me, I followed them. They put be in the monkey cage. And [you have to wait there] until the duty officer calls you. The police officer [who stopped me] wrote in the report "fine for no registration." I had a Moscow Region registration, but it's the same thing. "But if you register in Moscow region," [they say], "you have to register here." But that's not true! And an 80,000 ruble fine. I didn't have any money, but I had a tape recorder in the car, and they told me I could leave it at the station until I brought the money, but I wouldn't give it to them and said, "Lock me up!" And they did. And they let me out at 4:00 a.m. Call home? Are you kidding?109

The police report on his case noted that he had been fined for violating registration regulations but that he had no money to pay.

"Guram," a thirty-four-year old refugee from Abkhazia, was made to pay fines repeatedly in Moscow city in the winter of 1997 because he was registered for temporary residence in Zhukovskii, a town about fifty kilometers from Moscow in Moscow region. "[When the police see this registration] sometimes it's just fine, and sometimes not. They say its not valid [for Moscow]. . .and I have to pay a fine." Guram described in detail a specific incident in June 1996 in which police in northern Moscow detained and "fined" him, allegedly for invalid registration documents; it is unclear, however, whether the police in good faith contacted the police station in Zhukovskii where Guram had registered. Moreover, the duty officer did not ask Guram to sign a police report, a copy of which would have served as a receipt for the fine he paid. He told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki:

They caught me near the Baikal cinema, near the Vodnoy Stadion metro station. . . It was about 9:00 a.m. There were four [policemen]. They put me right in the car. I was holding bread and baby food. I told them I needed to go home and feed my child. They said the standard things . . . and pushed me in the car . . . and drove me to the station, about two kilometers from the cinema. At the station they searched me and put me behind bars. [I stayed there] about four hours. They checked my registration [right in front of me] and said it was invalid. I said, "How's that?" I said, "Call the police department where the registration was done!" I don't know whether or not they called. They didn't say. They said if you don't pay we're not letting you out. I said how much, 50,000? . . . They didn't write up a report and I did not sign anything.110

Since he had no money with him, the duty officer held his passport while Guram went home to get money. Upon paying the "fine," the police returned Guram's passport.

"Nodar," a twenty-three-year old refugee from Abkhazia, came to Moscow in the fall of 1996. Police frequently stopped him, examined his temporary registration document, and then detained him at police stations to verify the document. He also claimed that when police at the station are "too lazy" to run a computer check on him, they order him to pay a fine. In April 1997, police at the Volzhskaya metro station detained him behind bars at that station's police room because, he believed:

I talked a lot. I wanted to explain [that my registration was all right]. I was able to talk someone at the station into letting me go because it turned out he did his military service in Georgia and had a lot of friends in Georgia. He turned out to be kind, he made the phone call [to the housing committee], and let me out. The line was constantly busy. Then he called the police station where I'm registered, but that line was also busy. So we had time to talk. I was there for an hour and a half.

The rules on registration do not afford adequate time for people to learn where and how they must register and or to complete the registration within the twenty-four hour period, as prescribed in the Moscow rules. When police choose to enforce these rules they do so rigorously. "Abdul," a forty-five-year-old Afghan refugee (with UNHCR and MMS certification cards) and former lieutenant general in the Afghan army, took over the sublease on an apartment a friend had been subleasing upon his arrival in Moscow in January 1997. Immediately after he moved in, at midnight, the neighborhood inspector and two other policemen knocked on Abdul's door. Abdul's tourist visa was valid, but he had not yet registered at UVIR, as all foreigners are required to do; he was fined 50,000 rubles. After he registered the inspector returned, examined Abdul's visa and UVIR registration, and fined Abdul another 50,000 rubles because he was not registered to live in that apartment. The inspector again returned several nights later, again at midnight, to verify Abdul's registration for that apartment:

He banged at the door and I opened it. The children [Abdul has four children] were sleeping and got scared. He went in the room and pushed and kicked on the sleeping children under their blankets saying, "What's that, and that and that . . . I said, "what are you doing, have you no conscience?" He wanted to hit me but I held his arms. He said, "Tomorrow I will seal off this apartment."

The next day the apartment was locked and sealed; Abdul and his landlady went to the police station with the landlady's sublease-which she had concluded with her previous tenant-and a certificate from the Tax Inspectorate proving that she paid taxes on the rent. The police reportedly told the landlady that she had been responsible for registering Abdul, that she had violated the rules and that she had two days to get Abdul and his family out of the apartment. Terrified that she might lose her apartment, she asked Abdul to leave.

In early May police stopped "Malik"-a thirty-nine-year-old former colonel-general of the Afghan army-who is a UNHCR recognized refugee in southern Moscow and brought him to the station near the Kakhovskaya metro station. Malik's claimed that his tourist visa, registration and passport were all valid, but that police wanted a 200,000 ruble fine: He told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki:

I knew it was good. I kept asking, "why?" I said let's call, but they wanted [the money]. The policeman finally gave in and said, "If it's fake, I'll kill you."

The policeman called and asked for [computer verification] for my passport number and visa, and put my visa down. Then he said, "O.K., it's not a fake, but give me 50,000 anyway. When he saw I wasn't going to give him anything he started to rip my visa. So what could I do?111

A Human Rights Watch/Helsinki representative saw the taped-up tear in "Malik's" visa.

Deportations and Pre-Deportation Detention

Resolution 637-RM and other Moscow city resolutions failed to stipulate under which circumstances the violation of registration rules would trigger a fine or deportation or expulsion from the city, thereby granting police broad discretion in applying sanctions. The resolution appeared to indicate that deportation would result from either a lack of identification documents or the inability of a repeat offender to pay a fine; yet there seems to be no pattern to distinguish among those aliens who are deported summarily and those who are fined literally dozens of times. While the July 9, 1997, Moscow law on registration112 does not expressly include deportation among punitive measures for violators, it does not expressly abolish the old rule allowing this. Human Rights Watch/Helsinki fears that the practice may continue, especially since expulsion from a city remains an established sanction for punishing Russian Federation citizens guilty of vagrancy, and also because future administrative regulations may reintroduce it.

Asylum Seekers

Moscow police often detain asylum seekers who are UNHCR-recognized refugees and who have filed applications for refugee status with the Moscow Migration Service and hold them in lengthy custody in filtration holding centers113 for failure to comply with registration regulations and attempt to deport them or to forcibly return them to the countries in which they fear persecution. This practice violates in a most perverse way the Russian government's obligation under the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees to protect refugees from refoulement.

It is unclear how many asylum seekers were subjected to deportation from Moscow during the past year. However, according to a Western source, in the summer of 1997 forty-five people from countries outside the CIS and Baltic states (out of a total of 164), were held in custody at the filtration holding center at Severny in northern Moscow, the facility that also holds other foreigners.114 Typically such individuals are held for violating registration rules or overstaying their visas, or one of these in combination with another infraction, such as working illegally. Another source reported on individual cases of detained asylum seekers at the center and of frustrating, protracted and sometimes futile attempts to prevent their deportation to their home and third countries and to secure their release. As stated above, because UVIR does not recognize the validity of asylum seekers' UNHCR refugee status or MMS certification cards without an UVIR stamp, it considers such individuals illegal aliens.

Cases of this kind included:115

* Two Somali refugees who had been waiting three years for status determination, and whose MMS cards were valid until February 1997, detained in December 1996 on the grounds that they were illegally on Russian territory;

* an Ethiopian refugee whom police in February 1997 accused of having false student registration documents;

* A Mauritanian refugee detained in March 1997 for not being registered in the city of Moscow;

* An Afghan refugee detained in March for not being registered in Moscow; and

* A Nigerian refugee detained on March 25, whose deportation was pressed by UVIR with the Nigerian Embassy in Moscow.

According to another Western source and a former Severny detainee, conditions in Severny are deplorable. Toilets are a hole in the cell floor, detainees may shower reportedly once per month and the food is reportedly putrid. Many detainees reportedly suffer skin disorders such as scabies as a result of poor hygienic conditions. Moreover, detainees there do not have access to an attorney.

The former Severny detainee-Badin Galalia, an Iraqi Kurd-recounted in detail to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki his experience of 111 days in detention at Severny. On January 6, Mr. Galalia was taken from his home into custody without explanation, although he had been living in Russia for three years illegally and had not applied to the UNHCR for refugee status. His Russian common law wife, Elena Valttakh, learned of his whereabouts only three days later, since Severny authorities did not allow him to make a phone call. UVIR authorities at Severny denied Mr. Galalia access to a lawyer and apparently began to prepare for his deportation to Iraq. They also ignored pleadings from Ms. Valttakh that she was prepared to marry him to legalize his status. During his stay in Severny he was not permitted to shower.116

After Mr. Galalia's attempted suicide in April, UVIR officials sent Mr. Galalia to a psychiatric hospital. When his wife, Elena Vattakh, and UNHCR protection officers became concerned about his whereabouts and well-being, Severny authorities feigned ignorance for several days.Mr. Galalia was released from the psychiatric hospital on June 16.

Ms. Vattakh reported to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that when she complained to the Federal Migration Service about Mr. Galalia's treatment and the attempt to deport him to Iraq, a representative scoffed at her, "What do you want? This is Moscow! It's not Russia." She told Human Rights/Helsinki, "He said that a federal law is one thing, but that there was a decree signed by the mayor to clean up all of Moscow, all of it, for the 850th anniversary."117

CIS Citizens

Prior to "deportation" from Moscow, alleged offenders of the registration system also are detained in filtration holding centers (see above). Deportation of legal aliens, such as visitors from the CIS who violate Moscow's registration rules, without recourse to review by a competent authority, violates article 13 of the ICCPR.

The two CIS citizens on whose "deportations" Human Rights Watch/Helsinki obtained testimony both worked at the open-air Cherkizovskii flea market. "Khamid," the uncle of a deportee from Tajikistan, spoke to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki on strict condition of anonymity. Police stopped his nephew, "Salim" towards the end of February 1997 and confiscated his passport, presumably until he could pay the fine he owed. A few days later, police stopped Salim, and, when the latter could not produce identification, placed him in a filtration holding center in Moscow's eastern district. When Khamid learned of the incident, he brought Salim's passport to the filtration detention center and attempted to have him released. "They told me it was too late, that they had already filed his case with the procurator's office [for deportation]," Khamid told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki. "They said he would stay [in custody] for at least a month."

Salim was released when Khamid appeared at the filtration detention center with a one-way ticket for Uzbekistan. "Of course he didn't go there," Khamid scoffed. We sold it. Now he is in Kirov."

The second case involved four Tajiks who were detained in spring 1997 and were also to be deported to Uzbekistan. M.P., a Russian who works as a superintendent at the market, was a friend of the detainees, procured railway tickets for them and facilitated their release from custody. He explained that his four Tajik friends and a Russian man were stopped near the gates of the market and then taken to the 101st police department, where they spent about twelve hours before being sent to the filtration holding center near Novoslobodskaya metro station. Police released the Russian man, who then informed M.P. of the fate of his friends. M.P. told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki:

I searched the police stations [for them] for three days. Then [the released Russian man] came to the market and told me, "Four of your friends are at the spetspriyemnik [filtration detention center]."I went to the spetspriyemnik and talked to the duty officer. He gave me their passports and told me to go buy them tickets for Dushanbe. I bought tickets to Tashkent because there were no trains to Dushanbe because of the typhoid epidemic. I brought him the tickets and waited two hours -then they let [my friends] out. No one came to the station to see that they departed.118

Failure to issue a receipt

Very few aliens receive receipts upon payment of fines, which in principle could protect them from being fined twice in one day. Iga Kokuliya, an ethnic Georgian from Abkhazia, recounted to Human Rights Watch how police fined him in early May 1997; Kokuliya claimed he did not have enough money for the 167,000 ruble fine (the official rate), but that he could borrow the money from friends. Upon reaching a shop owned by his friends, whom the police apparently knew, the police accepted a "fine" of 100,000 but did not issue a receipt. The same man alleged that in spring 1996, he was walking home from the grocery store and was stopped some 200 meters from his building by policeman. Since Kokuliya had no money to pay a fine, the policeman took about 45,000-50,000 rubles worth of groceries, the fine at that time. X, a twenty-three-year-old Georgian from Abkhazia, described the practice, which is commonplace:

I was near the entrance to the metro [in northwest Moscow], and I was stopped. They ask me to show my documents . . .and said I wasn't registered and I should pay a fine. I said, "Could you write me out a receipt?" And they say, "If you want we'll take you to the station .. .[if not] then pay up. And they took 50,000.119

In February 1997 "Hokim" paid a 100,000 ruble "fine" to an officer at a police station but signed no police report and received no receipt. A laborer from Tajikistan's Gharm valley, Hokim noted after waiting several hours at the station, he was called by the duty officer:

There was a large group of them. By the time he called me there were only five guys left to be called. He just said to me, `Do you have any money?' I said yes. He told me to put all my things on the table, took 100,000 rubles, and gave my passport back to me.120

M.H., a thirty-six-year-old former colonel in the Afghan army who had received a masters degree from the Donetsk Polytechnical Institute in 1986, arrived in Russia in 1996 and immediately applied for refugee status. Asked how many times in one week he was stopped by the police he retorted:

In one week? Better to ask how many times in one day. Every day, if I go to the market, out on the street. Maybe once a policeman has recognized my UNHCR identification card.

Six weeks ago a policeman ripped up my documents from the UNHCR. It was near the Hotel Sevastopol. The policeman was alone. There was another Afghan with me. He asked us for our documents and when I showed him them my refugee card [from the UNHCR] he said, "you don't have a registration certificate. This document is meaningless. I said it's a [UNHCR] document-I'm a refugee here. It's our documentation. But he ripped it up and said, "it doesn't matter to us. We're sending you back to the Talibs." He was serious. He put me in a car and said we were going to the station. I knew that if we were to go to the station I would have to sit two or three hours behind bars in a bad atmosphere. So I said on the way, how much would I have to pay for him to let me go. At first he said 100,000 but then I said I was poor, and he [went down] to 50,000.121