Two thousand Meskhetian Turks remain in Krasnodar Territory after US resettlement programme

Human rights activist are concerned with the end on October 1, 2007, of the US resettlement programme for Meskhetian Turks who live in the Krasnodar Territory. Almost two thousand Meskhetian Turks still remain in the Krasnodar Territory after the end of the programme.

Tamara Karastelyova (Novorossisk Committee for Human Rights) told about the difficulties confronted by representatives of this national minority:

"There was a moment when employees of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) had recommended people to give up their Uzbekistan citizenship and promised to put them on the programme. As soon as they received documents and presented their certificates to the IOM that they had ceased to be Uzbekistan citizens, in a couple of weeks they received an official refusal: since they had changed their status, they were excluded from the programme. As a result, quite a lot of people who earlier had passports and citizenship of Uzbekistan, are now neither Uzbekistan nor Russian citizens. They have found themselves in a tough situation, without property and other social benefits."

We note here that the programme was launched on February 16, 2004, and was carried out by the US government and the IOM.

The programme target group was ethnic Meskhetian Turks who had lived in Uzbekistan before moving to the Krasnodar Territory and should have been living in the Krasnodar Territory as of January 1, 2004.