immigration

On Friday evening, 17 people from among the Chechens detained the day before received refugee status and were allowed into Polish territory. All of them were provided with food and basic necessities. After filling out the necessary documents, all refugees will go to Warsaw, where the procedure for obtaining refugee status will continue.
Seven natives of Chechnya, on their own behalf and on behalf of 19 members of their families, declared that they wish to receive political asylum in Poland. Another group of Chechen refugees (31 people), after more than two weeks of proceedings, went to the Polish city of Terespol on Saturday evening.
President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and the Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared the inadmissibility of Poland's violation of international norms and turned to Russia with a request for active assistance in resolving this problem. After all interested parties found a mutually acceptable solution to this problem, about a hundred Russian Chechen citizens went to Poland.
On Friday, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond asked authorities in Poland and Lithuania not to "systematically deny" admission to Chechens. According to information received by UNHCR from certain humanitarian organizations, earlier this month the Lithuanian authorities expelled 26 people of Chechen nationality who illegally entered the territory of the republic. On November 6, 17 Chechens who crossed the border near the village of Shalchininkai were sent to Belarus, and two days later, Lithuanian border guards detained nine Chechens at the Vilnius station who, having jumped off the Moscow-Kaliningrad train, tried to climb over the fence separating the transit platform from other ways.
The UNHCR Bureau immediately stated that by denying political asylum to Chechens, Lithuania was violating its own law on the legal status of aliens and the 1951 International Refugee Convention. Moreover, the UNHCR believes that “this complicates the process of harmonization of pan-European asylum policies.” At the same time, the right-wing opposition in the Lithuanian Sejm, whose representatives have never hidden their sympathy for the Chechen separatists, demanded that those who ordered the deportation of the Chechens be punished.
But Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas considered the actions of the border guards justified, pointing out that “the law is the law, and order is order.” According to him, all the detainees are citizens of the Russian Federation; they did not ask for political asylum, and therefore were expelled. The Speaker of the Lithuanian Seimas, Arturas Paulauskas, who is starting a working visit to Moscow today, also expressed solidarity with the Prime Minister.
According to the official representative of the Polish border service in Terespol, Lieutenant Colonel Andrzej Wojcik, there is no discrimination in the fact that Chechens are not allowed into Poland. “We do not allow them into our country for the same reasons as citizens of any other state. And we don’t care whether they are Chechens, Ingush or Ossetians. The main thing for us is that they are all citizens of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Vuychik in a conversation with a Kommersant correspondent. He noted that the reasons for refusal are the presence of a false passport, the lack of the required amount of money in the amount of 100 zlotys ($25) for each day of stay in the country, or an attempt to deceive when declaring the purpose of the trip. Thus, Mr. Vuychik reported, many of the Chechens indicate the purpose of their trip as “tourism” and at the same time take with them carpentry tools or gardening equipment (hammers, axes, saws, ladders and shovels), which indicates their intention to find employment in some private sector .
VLADIMIR Kommersant-VODO, Warsaw

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 208/P dated November 18, 2002, p. 5

Authors:

Vladimir Vodo

Poland will allow in those Chechens who ask for political asylum