MOSCOW: OPEN SEASON, CLOSED CITY

SUMMARY 2

RECOMMENDATIONS 3

INTRODUCTION 5

MOSCOW'S REGISTRATION AND REFUGEE POLICY: A STATE WITHIN A STATE 7

Registration for Temporary Stays 7

Registration for Permanent Residence 9

Evaluation 11

THE IMPACT OF REGISTRATION ON REFUGEES AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS 13

Introduction 13

Moscow Refugee Regulations: A Rule Apart from International Standards 13

For Asylum Seekers from outside the former Soviet Union 15

Asylum Seekers from the CIS and Baltic States and the Internally Displaced from Russia 16

ENFORCEMENT OF THE REGISTRATION REGIME 17

Background 17

"Clean-ups" of Moscow 18

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND ENFORCEMENT PRACTICES 20

Fining of People Awaiting Status Determination 20

Attempts to register 22

Invasions of Privacy-Enforcement in Private Homes 22

Police Violence 26

Other Arbitrary and Predatory Conduct by Police 30

Deportations and Pre-Deportation Detention 35

Asylum Seekers 35

CIS Citizens 36

Failure to issue a receipt 37

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 39

From September 5-7 during the commemoration festivities for the 850th anniversary, Moscow will be open for out-of-town citizens, stated Valerii Shantsev, Vice-Mayor of the capital. In addition, he noted, there will be heightened supervision over out-of-towners. There are plans to check all railroad stations, airports and ground transport entering Moscow. These measures are being introduced to prevent criminal elements from Russia's regions and countries of the CIS from entering the capital. However, these actions will in no way hinder all those who wish to come to see the capital in its jubilee. Segodnya (Today), August 14, 1997, page 1.

SUMMARY

Today Moscow is throwing its doors open to visitors to help celebrate the 850th anniversary of its founding. The great lengths that the Moscow city government, led by Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, has invested in the city's celebrations to attract visitors contrasts sharply with its strictly enforced policy, left over from the Soviet era, to limit and control visitors' stays in the capital, and to make residence in Moscow practically off-limits to non-Muscovites. Even with several apparent recent improvements, Moscow's implementation of Russia's civilian registration system, whichrequires permanent residents and visitors to register with the police, remains unduly onerous and discriminatory. Indeed, current registration rules in Moscow amount to a licensing system and are not based on the idea of notification, as the federal rules were intended. They infringe on freedom of movement as much as their predecessor, the propiska-or the obligatory permit that appeared (and continues to appear) as a stamp in every citizen's internal passport indicating his or her place of residence.

Inextricably linked to these limits on freedom of movement are three central human rights problems, which the present report documents. First, the rules are crafted to discriminate against citizens from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), who enjoy the right to entry to Russia without a visa. Under the Russian constitution, they enjoy same rights as Russian citizens, yet they must pay a fee equivalent to U.S.$45 for the privilege of visiting Russia for more than fifteen days.

Second, the rules' vague assignments of sanctions are an open invitation for police abuse, and indeed police enforce these rules in a way that is so predatory and discriminatory that the rules appear as mere pretexts for abuse, including extortion, beatings, invasion of privacy and destruction of identity documents. Police routinely and vigorously detain individuals on identity checks for registration documents, and apparently do so overwhelmingly on the basis of skin color. Russian citizens are as much prey to discriminatory identity checks as citizens from the CIS. The scale of registration policy enforcement and the infringement of such rights as the right to privacy for the sake of enforcement, is characteristic of a declared state of emergency, yet no such state of emergency exists.

Third, the strictly enforced rules place an additional burden on asylum seekers, who suffer overwhelmingly from the police abuse described above. Asylum seekers are screened and registered by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), under an agreement with federal authorities, and by the Moscow Migration Service (MMS), the government agency responsible for processing asylum applications in the capital. But central police agencies routinely refuse to accept the validity of these credentials or of refugee status itself. Police systematically stop such refugees in the street or enter their homes without warrants, tear up their UNHCR and MMS cards, and extort on the spot "fines"-without receipts-for failure to register with the police. Scores of refugees told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki of experiencing numerous arrests, often accompanied by beatings, in which demands for documents appeared primarily an opportunity for police to strip them of money and valuables. Most asylum seekers confront a range of obstacles by which they are effectively denied the opportunity to register with the police as residents of Moscow: their failure to do so means they are deemed to be in Moscow illegally. They also face detention in holding centers and deportation, despite their right to asylum under federal law and regulations.

Under special Moscow rules, asylum seekers from the CIS and the Baltic states cannot apply for asylum in Moscow unless they have either a Moscow permanent residence permit or close relatives in Moscow with whom theycan cohabit. Those who do not, the vast majority, have no institution to turn to for protection; for them, living in Moscow is running a daily gauntlet of police demanding money, and the real prospect of police beatings, detention and deportation.

During the Soviet era, Moscow was the most privileged city in the Soviet Union, well stocked with consumer goods that were unavailable elsewhere, and the Moscow propiska was nearly impossible to obtain. Moscow remains Russia's undisputed beacon city. It has enjoyed economic growth unparalleled in Russia's regions, many of which are reeling in the transition from the Soviet-era command economy. Moscow's leaders justify the need to maintain residence and visitors' restrictions and to enforce a policy of no refugees by pointing to a need to achieve zero population growth in the city. City officials perceive Moscow to be flooded with illegal immigrants, refugees, internally displaced and other forced migrants from other parts of Russia and from the CIS, who may travel and reside in Russia without a visa.

Moscow is not the only region in Russia with highly restrictive registration systems for short visits and residence. Stavropol and Krasnodar provinces, for example have long maintained them, presumably to deter refugees from the nearby Caucasus, which has been torn by war and ethnic violence since 1988. St. Petersburg, Russia's second city, enforces rules similar to Moscow's as does Voronezh, a city in Russia's Black Earth Region. (Human Rights Watch/Helsinki has conducted research on the registration system and its enforcement in Stavropol and Krasnodar, and will soon publish a report on its findings.)

We single out Moscow in this report for two reasons. First, police abuse of asylum seekers-on the pretext of enforcing registration rules-has reached an intolerable level, especially in the months preceding the 850th anniversary celebrations. In mid-May Mayor Luzhkov ordered the city's migration services to "remove refugees and displaced persons" illegally residing in Moscow, which appeared to initiate this latest campaign. Second, Moscow authorities have appeared unwilling or unable to prevent and punish wide-scale human rights abuse committed in the name of enforcing registration requirements. At the same time, however, the city government has demonstrated a willingness to relax slightly its restrictive policies, following the adoption of a new Russian law on refugees, judicial decisions favoring freedom of movement.