Anti-Tajik Rhetoric in Moscow Was Electioneering
Anti-Tajik Rhetoric in Moscow Was Electioneering
Russian moves to deport Tajik workers were driven by political parties campaigning for the December 4 parliamentary election, which wanted to display a tough attitude to foreign migrants, a leading analyst in Dushanbe says.
IWPR asked Rustam Bobojonov, an expert on migration in Tajikistan, to comment on the sudden clampdown on Tajik migrants that followed the conviction of Russian national Vladimir Sadovnichi and his Estonian co-pilot Alexei Rudenko for landing their cargo plane in southern Tajikistan when they ran out of fuel.
The anti-Tajik rhetoric sparked by the case in Moscow, and moves by Russian immigration officials to round up migrants, suggested that everyone was keen to capitalise on xenophobic attitudes normally the preserve of far-right nationalists.
“Many of the... problems that came up in the ‘pilots case’ existed before, but only now have they emerged in such acute form, and in ways so interconnected with one another. I can say with a lot of confidence that it was prompted by the election to the [Russian] State Duma,” Bobojonov said. “If there hadn’t been this election, nothing would have come of it, since there have always been problems with migration, with registration, and with legal immigrants working illegally. But clearly some political parties wanted to build up their reputations on the back of this issue.”
Bobojonov noted that since the election, demands to impose travel restrictions on Tajiks have died down.
A court in Tajikistan released the two pilots on November 22
The audio programme, in Russian, went out on national radio stations in Tajikistan, as part of IWPR project work funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
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