Tajik Murder Arrests Fail to Reassure Migrants

Monday, 21 February, 2005

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IWPR staff

News that a group of teenagers have been detained in connection with the murder of a nine-year-old Tajik girl in St Petersburg has done little to reassure an increasingly nervous migrant community.

Over the last decade, hundreds of thousands of Tajik economic migrants are believed to have left their impoverished republic in search of work in Russia, where they have been the target of a series of racist attacks in recent years.

The horror of Khursheda Sultanova’s death in February reopened the sensitive subject of racism and discrimination against Central Asia and the Caucasian migrants and provoked fears over the activities of skinhead gangs in Russian cities.

Khursheda, her father and a cousin had been walking home from a visit to an ice-skating rink. A gang of teenagers armed with knives and knuckledusters attacked the group. In the ensuing melee, she was stabbed eleven times and died on the spot.

Pressure from internationals organisations and Tajik diplomats in Russia has grown in the three months since the murder.

However, news that 13 young people have been arrested and charged with the murders has done little to reassure the Tajik community that the streets of Russian cities are safe for them.

On May 28, St Petersburg police announced that 12 teenagers had been detained in connection with Khursheda’s death. Another youngster was arrested a few days later. The city’s prosecutor Nikolai Vinnichenko said the accused could face up to ten years in prison if found guilty.

The authorities immediately played down reports that the incident was racially-motivated, suggesting that it was a random attack by a group of hooligans.

This will have done little to comfort the migrant community which is frequently subject to tragedies of this kind. Such is their nervousness, that none of their leaders were prepared to speak to the media about the arrests.

The children of economic migrants often suffer the most as they struggle to adjust to life in a new country.

Twelve-year-old Firuza Iskandarova told IWPR that she initially had a dreadful time when her parents left Tajikistan in search of a better life. “No one would want to be friends with me because I am a Tajik,” she remembered. “They called me names, refused to play with me, and then they ganged up on me and beat me up regularly.”

Nine-year-old Khurshed Sultonov was also bullied when he joined his new school in Moscow. “One boy started gathering others for a game, but when I approached them, he told me to go away because I am not Russian,” he whispered, adding that he is still rejected by his classmates and is often forced to play on his own during breaks.

His mother Zebo Sultonova spoke of how helpless she felt in the face of her child’s suffering. “No need to ask who taught Khurshed’s classmates to hate non-Russians - it must have been their parents,” she said bitterly.

Tajiks have long suffered from negative media coverage within Russia, which is all too ready to associate the people of Tajikistan with heroin smuggling and other criminal activity.

This has added to an already tangible sense of mistrust and anger towards market traders from Central Asia and the Caucasus, who are accused of setting prices for fruit and vegetables too high.

The fact that Tajiks provide one of the cheapest sources of labour in Russia has also stirred bad feeling and jealousy among local workers, who see their own positions coming under threat.

In spite of this resentment and often physical danger, Tajik workers continue to make the long journey in search of work. International organisations estimate that around a million Tajik citizens now live in Russia – some permanently, others on a seasonal basis.

Dushanbe resident Nigina Niyazova, whose two sons have been working in St Petersburg since 2000, expressed relief that the police had made progress in the Sultanova case. “Maybe this will stop all those skinheads and nationalists from using violence against Tajiks. We are a peaceful, law-abiding and industrious people and I don’t understand why we are being beaten or murdered in Russia,” she said.

A high-ranking official in the Tajik presidential administration, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IWPR that the threats facing migrants in Russia was giving the Dushanbe authorities real cause for concern.

“The issue of Tajik labour migrants in Russia is being intensified now, especially by press. So on May 21, the foreign ministry sent a protest note to the Russian embassy in Tajikistan,” he said.

“It seems that there is not a single visitor from Moscow with whom our president and other members of government have not raised the issue of problem facing Tajik labour migrants in Russia, but so far nothing has been done. ”

In the meantime, worried parents constantly glance over their shoulders while their children do all that they can to fit in alongside their Russian classmates.

Rustam, a ten-year-old son of Tajik labour migrants, told IWPR that all his school friends – and teachers – know him by the Russian name Ruslan. “People think I’m from Moscow, and nobody asks where I came from,” he smiled, pointing to the red hair that gives him a less-than Tajik appearance.

“I don’t tell anyone I’m from Tajikistan – because if I did, there isn’t a single kid in the neighbourhood who’d be willing to play with me.”

Alexander Ignatov, a pseudonym for a Russian journalist, and Lydia Isamova, IWPR country director in Dushanbe, contributed to this report.