Refugees protest against relocation

Spontaneous public meetings have been under way in a community of Ingush refugees in Maiskii, Prigorodnyi district, North Ossetia, in the last few days.

The internally displaced people protest against the intention of local authorities to remove the community. The refugees received a notice of the need to close the camp, signed by a representative of the Prigorodnyi district administration, on 7 December this year. The document says, in particular, that the plot of land where the accommodation blocks are stationed "is municipal property and comes under the category of agricultural land." The community "has no lawful status and the refugees violate the legitimate interests of Maiskii residents by arbitrarily occupying a plot of land from among Maiskii's lands," the document indicates.

In connection with this, the local administration suggests that the refugees move from the plot of land before 13 December 2005. There is information, that they are offered land in the immediate vicinity of the administrative border with Ingushetia (in the Novyi village which is being founded several kilometres away from Nazran, Ingushetia). Otherwise, the district government intends to settle the issue of relocating the refugees through court proceedings.

The refugees who disagree with this interpretation of the problem have staged a spontaneous protest action. The people demand that authorities should help them return to their former residences in North Ossetia's Prigorodnyi district. "For 13 years already, we have been living in inhuman conditions without even elementary living conditions. In our native villages we have flats and houses, but we are not allowed to go there. Now they are deporting us somewhere again. How long will this persecution of deprived people last?" they say.

The developments have provoked negative reaction in Ingushetia. Mr Magomed-Rashid Pliyev, Deputy Minister of Public and Interethnic Relations, has called the developments another attempt by the Ossetian government to ignore the problem of return of refugees to their permanent residence.

The Maiskii refugee community where internally displaced people from various communities of the Prigorodnyi district live developed spontaneously after the tragic events in the autumn of 1992. It is mostly inhabited by residents of so-called "closed" or problematic communities to which the Ossetian party thinks it so far impossible to return, and by citizens who used to live in municipal housing. Meanwhile, the 10-year-old community where more than 200 refugee families live has not been granted an official status of a temporary accommodation centre to date. Technically, the camp is situated in North Ossetia, but in fact its life continues to be organised by the government of Ingushetia.

More about Ossetian-Ingush conflict:

• Ossetian-Ingush conflict
• Present-day situation in 1992 Ossetian-Ingush conflict area (as of March 2002)