Human rights advocates indicate mass refugee departure from Ingushetia

A dramatic outbreak of anti-refugee and anti-Chechen sentiments which is to be seen in the republic after the June 22 events has led to a mass departure of internally displaced people from Ingushetia to Chechnya. In the opinion of representatives of Chechen nongovernmental organizations handling problems of internally displaced people, over 2,500 citizens of Chechnya have left Ingushetia over the past three weeks. Most of the "returnees" are former dwellers of compact refugee communities in the republic, according to the human rights advocates.

"It is quite natural that migration officials that have been trying in vain to have tens of thousands of refugees from Chechnya back to their homeland in the last few years are now making use of the situation that took shape after the recent events in Ingushetia to escalate fear and panic among the internally displaced people. This was the reason for cutting the electricity and gas supply beginning from June 23 in many temporary accommodation points where refugees live," believes Taisa Isaeva, head of the press center for the Council of Nongovernmental Organizations of the Chechen Republic. "No doubt, systematic 'special operations' and 'clean-ups' conducted by law enforcement and security agencies in compact refugee communities play not the least role in accelerating the process of refugees' return to Chechnya."

As is known, the temporary accommodation point for refugees from Chechnya quartered on the premises of a dairy farm in the Altievo municipal district of Nazran where more than 1,000 people had lived was shut down recently. The compact refugee community on a dairy farm in Nasyr-Kort is next in line to be eliminated, according to analysts. An average of thirty to forty families (one hundred to one hundred and fifty people on average) leave the republic every day, according to some officials of Ingushetia's Migration Service.