Thread: Revival of Cossacks Casts Muslim Group Out of Russia to U.S.

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Revival of Cossacks Casts Muslim Group Out of Russia to U.S.

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 18, 2005; A19

KRASNODAR, Russia -- Thousands of Muslims from a small ethnic group known as the Meskhetian Turks are fleeing this Black Sea region for the United States. The exodus is caused by what human rights groups call a campaign of persecution sanctioned by local authorities and spearheaded by the Cossacks, a Russian militia that fought for the czars and is being revived.

In the past year, just more than 5,000 Meskhetian Turks have resettled in the United States as refugees, and 4,400 have approval to immigrate, according to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Another 7,000 have filed applications that U.S. officials are reviewing.

"I call it soft ethnic cleansing," said Alexander Ossipov, an analyst at the Institute for Humanities and Political Studies in Moscow. "The local authorities decided which ethnic groups were desirable and which were not. It's government based on a racist ideology."

The United States has criticized actions of the Krasnodar authorities in State Department human rights reports and at meetings of the 55-country Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Russian officials in the south say the Meskhetian Turks are foreigners who have no right to remain in Russia. They play down reports of Cossack violence.

In interviews, leaders of the Meskhetian community expressed dismay that the Russian government has not curbed the actions of the local authorities and has said it intends to formalize the role of the Cossacks as an auxiliary force in law enforcement nationwide.

President Vladimir Putin has proposed a law that would allow Cossacks to serve in special units in the military, assist the police and work in border control, counterterrorism and counter-drug operations. Political analysts predict the legislation will pass in the next few months.

"There is a long-felt need to confer a legal status on the activity of Cossack units," Putin said in May at a meeting with Cossack leaders. "Cossacks serving in Cossack units keep law and order."

The Cossacks' reemergence is part of a broader revival of vestiges of the Russian past, both czarist and Soviet, that for many people invoke national greatness and patriotism, a goal of the Kremlin. The trend began under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and has continued under Putin.

"How can Putin make police out of people who have no respect for the law?" said Sarvar Tedorov, 57, a community leader who lives in the town of Varenikovskaya, about 80 miles from Krasnodar. "Is he completely blind? They break into our houses, even during prayer. They humiliate us and call us names. The beatings are regular."

Originally from southern Georgia near the border with Turkey, the Meskhetians are a rural, Turkish-speaking people who have often been buffeted by their Russian neighbors.

In November 1944, Joseph Stalin ordered their deportation from Georgia to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia for alleged sympathy with the Nazi forces that invaded the Soviet Union. Nearly 90,000 people were uprooted.

In June 1989, Soviet authorities ordered the evacuation of the Meskhetian Turks from Uzbekistan after they became the target of ethnic rioting there. About 12,000 moved to Krasnodar; many others went to central Russia.

In 1991, Russia passed a law that all former Soviet citizens who lived permanently in Russia when the law came into effect were deemed Russian citizens, as long they didn't renounce that right within 12 months. In most parts of Russia, Meskhetian Turks became citizens.

In Krasnodar, however, officials balked and denied official residency papers to the Meskhetians, the prerequisite for citizenship applications, said Ossipov, who has written extensively about the plight of the group for Memorial, a Russian human rights group, and the U.N. refugee agency.

Meskhetians say local officials also have blocked implementation of a more recent law that on paper makes it easier for them to obtain Russian citizenship.

The officials say the Meskhetians are citizens of Uzbekistan who spurned their chance to become Russian citizens. "Theirs is not a problem with the Krasnodar region, it's a problem of their own creation," said Valery Ostrozhny, deputy head of the Department for Monitoring Migration in the Krasnodar regional government.

In meetings of international organizations, Russian officials have said that the Meskhetian Turks should be repatriated to Georgia, their historic homeland. Memorial and other groups insist that any return to Georgia should be voluntary and should not be used to deny Meskhetians their rights in Russia, including citizenship.

Without residency permits, the Meskhetians in Krasnodar became isolated in their towns and villages. According to reports by Memorial, their homes were labeled illegal, they could not legally hold jobs, their marriages were not recognized and the births of their children were not officially recorded, extending the state of limbo into succeeding generations.

"It's impossible to live here," said Rustam Zautadze, 35, also from Varenikovskaya, who is moving to Baltimore soon with 17 other family members, including his wife and three children, his parents, his siblings and their children. "Several times, Cossacks and police came to my house and asked for our papers, which of course we don't have. And then they fine us. If they catch you on the street, they arrest you. I've spent several weeks in detention centers."

Local officials said such cases are rare. "Where the local authorities did something wrong," Ostrozhny said, "the courts ruled against them. But there aren't many of those cases."

The region's top leadership appears to endorse administrative harassment. "Most of the Meskhetian Turks do not want to get out of our territory," Gov. Alexander Tkachev said in a speech in September 2001. "I think all available mechanism of pressure and persuasion will be employed to make the number of departing guests rise."

In a speech a year later, Tkachev, who some analysts see as a possible presidential candidate in 2008, said: "We must protect our land and the native population. This is Cossack land and everyone knows it."

The Cossacks are descended mostly from Russian serfs who fled to the south in the 16th century to escape czarist authority. Later, they became a special military community for the czars, producing generation after generation of soldiers famed for their bravery and horsemanship.

As the czar's cavalry, they helped in the conquest of Siberia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Most famously, they harassed Napoleon's troops during the French retreat in 1812. After the Russian revolution in 1917, the Cossacks fought against the Red Army. That brought on severe repression that led thousands of them to side with the Nazis during World War II .

That is a period Cossack leaders prefer to forget. Vladimir Gromov, chieftain of the Cossacks in the Krasnodar region, instead holds forth on how the Cossacks saved Europe from "Islamic aggression." They were instrumental in defeating the invading Turks at Vienna in 1683, he contends.

Gromov said that Russia again needs to be protected from Muslim outsiders. "Meskhetian Turks and other ethnic groups should live in their historical birthplace," he said. "Not here."

"I have to save my family from the persecution," Tedorov said. He said he will be moving to Phoenix this month with his wife, two of his children, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. They will join two of Tedorov's daughters already living in Arizona.

Vadim Karastelev, director of the Human Rights Center in Novorossiisk in the Krasnodar region, expressed concern that with the Meskhetian Turkish population dwindling, the Krasnodar authorities will turn their attention to other ethnic minorities -- Batum Kurds, Armenian Khemshil and the Yazidis.

The Batum Kurds and the Yazidis have already written the American embassy seeking refugee status in the United States, citing "endless persecution, repression and humiliation."

Believe it or not, these people are actually okay. Alot of them have settled in NH. They are classy, very well educated, and assimilate readily. Most of them speak English when they arrive here and learned specifically for the trip to America. Many of them are actually Christians, too. Not all of them are Muslims.

They aren't like the illegal latinos who demand that America either belongs to them or should kiss their derrieres. They don't act like America owes them something, like the illegals that have plagued us like vermin over the last 30 years. They don't show up illegally and then demand that America comes to them, they come to America.

Leave the Meshketchan Turks alone. They're okay from what I've seen.

Originally Posted by nhantimassredrebel

Believe it or not, these people are actually okay. Alot of them have settled in NH. They are classy, very well educated, and assimilate readily. Most of them speak English when they arrive here and learned specifically for the trip to America. Many of them are actually Christians, too. Not all of them are Muslims.

They aren't like the illegal latinos who demand that America either belongs to them or should kiss their derrieres. They don't act like America owes them something, like the illegals that have plagued us like vermin over the last 30 years. They don't show up illegally and then demand that America comes to them, they come to America.

Leave the Meshketchan Turks alone. They're okay from what I've seen.

I really do not care. They have settled, and will settle a number of these people in my city (Philadelphia) in the Islamic neighborhood of G-town, around the grand mosque.

My city, has settled so far...... Somalians#?, Albanians#?, Iraqi's, about 1,500 give or take, 4,000 Afghans last year, Meshketchan Turks this year, and Meshketchan turks next year.

Virtually overnight, an entire section of my city has been turned Muslim, and guess what... a Saudia Arabian (Wahabi) Madrassas is being built. Once their population grows, then the demands will begin.

Well, apparently they don't care either. But guess who's going to win. I would take one Meshketchan refugee who doesn't want to be in America and wants to go home over 1 million illegal Mexicans who don't want to go home but remain allegiant to Mexico. At least the Turks can contribute something to our society besides being cheap labor.

We had Somali refugees and Meshketchans in Manchester, NH. The Somalis would flush a toilet and run screaming. They would stare at a staircase in horror and refuse to walk up it. The Turks all got jobs, some as Engineers and Doctors. Some of them were lawyers in Russia, passed the NH Bar Exam and practice law here. These aren't worthless people, like most of the crap we get from the rest of the world. They can actually make America a better place.

I know what you are saying about Islamic Extremism. I spent a year of my life fighting it in Iraq. I would hate to see it spring up here. But most if not all of these Meshketchan Turks have too much going for them to take part in that. They aren't exactly going to blow themselves up for $50k when they are on the verge of getting $100k a year jobs in America!