Sochi closes migrants' centre

In Sochi, more than 100 people kept at a temporary detention facility for illegal migrants have been brought to the Kuban village of Gulkevichi. According to a staff member of the Sochi temporary detention facility for migrants, the authorities treated the facility as not suitable for the resort area, and it was finally closed.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that in 2013, the temporary detention facility for illegal migrants designed for 500 people was opened in the territory of the former boarding house in the Sochi village of Vardan. From the detention facility, migrants were deported to their homelands. In August 2016, NGO "Southern Human Rights Centre" reported that 108 migrants went on a hunger strike at the detention facility: they could not return home because of delays in connection with the inclusion of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA). The information was denied by the Prosecutor's Office.

According to Alla Kukhtenko, a staff member of the Sochi temporary detention facility for migrants, the closure of the detention centre was discussed a year ago. The land plot leased from the city for the detention facility is too expensive and is located in the resort area.

Semyon Semyonov, the chairman of the "Southern Human Rights Centre", who was in charge for activities of the reception of the "Migration and Law" network in the period of preparation and holding of the Sochi Olympic Games, noted that in Sochi, the rights of migrant workers were massively violated at Olympic construction sites, where they were not paid wages and where they suffered from lack of proper conditions, and at the detention facility in Vardan.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.