14.09 Citing Mistreatment, Turkic Group in Russia Seeks US Help – Activists
WASHINGTON, September 13 (By Maria Young for RIA Novosti) – Rights activists in Russia and the United States say they are quietly exploring ways to help thousands of Meskhetian Turks from Russia, where they claim severe abuse and discrimination, possibly by relocating them to the United States.
“We met in July with officials from DC, Congress members, human rights agencies. And we are working with agencies in Russia. Their job is collecting information and background because we are trying to get evidence and documents and proof about what’s happening with these people,” said Islom Shakhbandarov, President of the Ahiska Turkish American Community of Dayton.
The idea, Shakhbandarov told RIA Novosti, is to document extensive ethnic and religious discrimination against the Meskhetian Turks, also known as Ahiska Turks, a primarily Muslim population who have settled for the last two decades in southern Russia following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
Proof of widespread, significant mistreatment can be used to form the basis for a new, expanded resettlement program through the US State Department, much like an earlier program the State Department says brought an estimated 11,000 Meskhetian Turk refugees from the Krasnodar region of southern Russia to the United States from 2004 to 2007.
Dan Langenkamp, a spokesman for the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) confirmed an official July 12 meeting with Meskhetian Turk representatives, but did not indicate whether the US is open to the possibility of a new resettlement program.
Historically, Meskhetian Turks have lived in areas along the border between the former Soviet republic of Georgia, today an independent country, and Turkey. They were deported in mass numbers in 1944 by former Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin to Uzbekistan, another former Soviet republic, but fled from there following pogroms in 1989 and ended up settling in or near the Krasnodar region in southern Russia.
Today, Meskhetian Turk community leaders say they face routine discrimination there, too, from local residents who view their relatively recent arrival, en masse, with resentment.
The effort now, activists say, is to gather the evidence they need to expand the program to Meskhetian Turks in areas of southern Russia beyond Krasnodar, where they say the ethnic population also faces discrimination.
But it’s not easy, they say.
“A lot of people are afraid. They tell us what happened to them, but as soon as it comes to speaking publicly or writing to testify, they say,
