Gannushkina: deportation of Georgians from special facility of Archangelsk depends on Georgia

According to Russian legislation, the two citizens of Georgia, who are keeping hunger strike in a special detention facility of the city of Archangelsk, can stay there for a year pending deportation, unless the Georgian party accelerates the process of their exclusion. This was stated by Svetlana Gannushkina, a member of the board of the International Human Rights Centre "Memorial".

"It's very easy now for the Georgian authorities to make a request via Swiss (Georgia holds its diplomatic relations with Russia via Switzerland, - comment of the "Caucasian Knot"). It will correct, since they should know who was detained and why. If they indeed are 'pending exclusion', then, everything exclusively depends on Georgians," Ms Gannushkina said to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Another point is, according to her story, that the custody conditions should not humiliate human dignity. "Surely, these Russian facilities are very badly arranged; they're worse than our prisons. These reception centres are usually rebuilt from old special accumulation facilities for vagabonds; and the conditions there are awful," the human rights defender has noted.

Now, the Department for the Archangelsk Region of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) waits for the so-called "certificates on homecoming" to be sent from the FMS in Moscow; these documents should be sent by Georgia after Russia's request to confirm that Georgia would accept its citizens. The Georgian party should also give a photo and brief information on the person, that Russia could establish that this is the same person as he says.