Friends among strangers

Migrants from Asia and Africa call on Russia to turn its face to the East

Public associations of migrants from the countries of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America seem to have considered Russia’s tough actions in the South Ossetian conflict as a signal to resuscitate the USSR’s foreign policy. Yesterday, representatives of these associations at a press conference in Moscow expressed the hope that events in the Caucasus will significantly affect Russia's cooperation with the Arab and Muslim world. And at the same time, they will make life easier for the diasporas formed in our country from countries with which the Soviet Foreign Ministry tried to build allied relations. “There is a resource that is not used by Russian politicians - the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, which sympathize with a resurgent Russia,” representatives of the Federation of Migrants of Russia (FMR), the Association of Arab Migrants and the Russian Congress of the Peoples of the Caucasus said yesterday. These public organizations fully supported Russia’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and urge not to stop there, since the current situation itself contributes to the consolidation of Russia with the countries of the East, which will become a “counterweight to maintain the world balance.”

Referring to representatives of Western countries as nothing more than defenders of declarative democracy who constantly use force, the President of the Federation of Migrants of Russia Muhammad Amin Majumder (a native of Bangladesh) called on the republics that gained independence from Georgia “to maintain peace in the Eurasian region to refuse any type of assistance that is offered Western states." According to him, migrants, for whom Russia has become a second home, fear that Western intervention will give rise to new interethnic, interfaith and interethnic conflicts. “We are already seeing such dangerous policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, the Balkans and other regions of the world,” Mr. Majumder said.

Chairman of the Association of Arab Migrants Yousef Abu Bakr (Egypt), in turn, expressed hope that the deterioration of relations with the West will force Russia to reconsider its role in the Middle East, and in particular to return to more active cooperation with Palestinian movements. “The unipolar world from which we groan will be destroyed with the help of Russia,” Mr. Bakr hopes.

Migrants from the East who have become citizens of Russia call on the authorities of our country to use the opportunities of “public diplomacy” and, through the Asian and African diasporas, to increase the number of allies abroad. At the same time, newly minted Russians of Asian origin do not hide the fact that they would like to see one of the first steps liberalization of migration policy in relation to immigrants from countries that are considered “migration-dangerous” in the West: India, China, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan , Syria, etc. “These are friendly nations, Russia should cancel the short-sighted decision to recognize 21 states as “migration-dangerous”, since they do not pose a threat to the Russian public,” assured Mohammed Amin Majumder.

But if people from far abroad countries count on both military and economic assistance to their historical homeland and on the support of diasporas within Russia, then the Russian Congress of the Peoples of the Caucasus considers it necessary to include national associations of Russians abroad in their propaganda work. Chairman of the Congress Denga Khalidov believes that the lack of dialogue between Russian diplomats and immigrants from the Caucasus who have moved to Europe and the United States does not allow the creation of a pro-Russian public bridgehead in the West. According to him, the Congress, as well as a number of other public organizations, in the near future intend to make a number of proposals from the Russian Foreign Ministry for cooperation. As Mr. Khalidov explained to Vremya Novostei, the national diasporas of the peoples of Russia abroad rely exclusively on the organizational support of Russian embassies, in return offering extensive human resources almost all over the world. True, he warned against misuse of propaganda in the outside world, since people from the Caucasus react very painfully to how some domestic politicians “in the frenzy of speeches allow themselves to label the people of Georgia.”

Yulia KHOMCHENKO