Dismissed employees of Sochi Airport tell about discrimination of Caucasians

The Armenian Diaspora is drafting complaints to the Prosecutor's Office on behalf of the workers of the Sochi Airport, who claim that they had been fired because of their nationality.

On August 2, Sochi hosted meetings of the airport workers and members of the Armenian Diaspora "Sevan", in which over 30 people took part. Airport workers have decided to create an "alternative trade union" of dismissed airport workers, while Diaspora activists decided to appeal to the Prosecutor's Office with collective complaints about discrimination of airport workers because of their nationalities, Vakhtang Ezugbaya, the leader of the movement "Sochi Commune", told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

On July 31, the appeal of the workers of the Joint-Stock Company (JSC) "Sochi International Airport" was posted by the Armenian edition "Lragir.am". "In every possible way, they fire workers with Armenian surnames," says the appeal.

In its turn, the press service of the Sochi Airport has stated that the information about dismissal of workers because of their nationalities has nothing to do with reality.

However, airport workers themselves insist that they are fired exactly on the nationality basis, as new workers with Russian surnames are being hired instead. One of the fired workers with an Armenian surname has presented to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent, on conditions of anonymity, a list of 44 Slavic surnames. According to his version, it was planned to replace the dismissed Armenians with people from the list. "There are no seals or signatures here, but this is a confirmation that people with work experience, but with Armenian surnames, were all replaced by Russians," he said.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on August 5, 2019 at 09:48 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.