Finland has closed border crossings
In the second half of November, Finland completely closed the border with Russia, which stretches for almost one and a half thousand kilometers. Helsinki decided to close all border crossings after experiencing an “abnormal influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa”.
The Finns claim that the flow of refugees is regulated by representatives of the Russian authorities, who are also systematically directing those people towards the Finnish border.
Finland has closed border crossings twice. And at the same time, the Russian authorities, who initially ignored the influx of foreigners, began to massively arrest those with irregular visas in the second half of November.
The BBC’s Russian-language service says it has analyzed statistics on violations of court decisions on migration claims in Karelian courts. In total, 236 decisions were made in November and early December regarding violations of legal acts regulating migration, basically all of them from November 16. Judging by the times of the examined cases, during the first two weeks of November, the Russians did not arrest visa violators at all.
The picture is similar in other areas bordering Finland – Leningrad and Murmansk. There, too, the trials only started when Finland closed the border crossing points.
He flew to Moscow
One of the court decisions in Karelia was against a middle-aged man from Somalia. It is right in the city of Lachdenpochia, about 30-40 km from the Finnish border, in the third week of November. Along with him, on the same day, ten other people were also sentenced for violating the rules of entering or staying in the Russian Federation. About ten more – a day earlier.
The man says he left after several Islamist militants attacked him because of his professional activities. Earlier, his pregnant wife managed to leave Somalia and settled in Germany.
The BBC is not releasing the man’s name for his own safety, but the BBC claims to have a copy of his passport. A Somali man named Awadu says he had very specific reasons for emigrating, but his story is similar to the struggles of thousands of other migrants trying to reach Western countries.
The man says he left after several attacks by Islamist militants on him because of his work (she is also not being named for the same security reasons, fearing it would help identify the man). Even earlier, his pregnant wife managed to leave Somalia and settled in Germany. So the man hoped to reach her and the two sons.
Avadas flew to Moscow at the end of July this year with a tourist visa. However, he stayed in Russia for only a few days, went to Belarus – tried to get to Poland. He spent about a month at the border, but attempts to cross the border were unsuccessful, so the Somali returned to Minsk.
At that time, human rights groups already knew about Avad’s story and believed that he had reasons to seek asylum in the European Union. Human Rights WATCH representatives recommended him to wait until 2024, when the Belarusian authorities were going to consider his request for asylum, even found a lawyer for the man, but the Somali, who had already had troubles with the Belarusian militia, decided not to wait.
He returned to Moscow, but by then his visa had expired. The man appealed several times to human rights organizations for help in obtaining asylum in Russia.
He wrote: “While working in Somalia, I saw my friends and colleagues killed time and time again, through mass terrorist acts and contract killings.” At that time, Awad already thought that the possibility of meeting his wife and sons was bleak.
In mid-November, a Somali man found out in a social network group that it had become easier to cross the Finnish border, so he came to St. Petersburg.
It was not possible to get to Poland
He does not hide that he understood very well how little Russia satisfies such requests, so he went to Belarus again in September, but in two months he never crossed the border to the West. In mid-November, in a social network group that unites thousands of the same refugees, a Somali learned about the fact that it has become easier to cross the Finnish border, so he came to St. Petersburg.
He went to the border by taxi, as he says, for 200 dollars. The man insists that he organized the trip to the border himself, together with other newcomers from Somalia, whom he had known since the attempts to cross the Belarusian-Polish border. They allegedly communicated with the taxi driver through Google Translate.
“No one organized us and no one helped us,” he answered when asked if he had received any help from representatives of the Russian authorities.
“Scanpix”/”SIPA” photo/Migrants with bicycles at the Finnish border
The police suddenly got tougher
Earlier, other witnesses said that Russian border guards and police completely ignored large groups of foreigners with expired visas who tried to reach Finnish border crossing points.
But on the day when Avadas and his compatriots tried to do that, there were policemen standing on the road, in a really unfriendly mood. The passengers were detained, the driver was detained, but he allegedly got away after showing that he was summoned using an app on his phone, so he did not know anything about the passengers’ documents.
The first night, according to the Somali, they spent in a local military unit. The next day, a trial took place, awarding him 2,000. ruble fine and ordered to leave the Russian Federation. Until the time of departure, he had to be kept in a specialized institution – the temporary detention center for foreign citizens of the Ministry of the Interior.
“Work for the state”
Avada says he spent five days here. On the sixth day, according to him, some uniformed people came to the detention center and offered the migrants-criminals a deal: the mandatory departure from Russia will be canceled, but in return they need to “work for the state”.
Avadas vaguely describes what kind of work it is, saying that he signed the documents in Russian without even looking at them, because he still didn’t understand anything. But he testified after hearing from other foreigners who were sitting together that the Russian military offered a year of work in exchange for a good salary, medical care, the right to stay in Russia after the end of the contract and even a meeting with his family.
Uniformed people came to the detention center and offered the migrants a deal: they would cancel the mandatory departure from Russia, but in exchange they had to “work for the state”.
“We asked what kind of work it would be, and we were told it was simple and good,” says the Somali.
There were 12 people who agreed to such proposals – six Somalis, five Arabs and one Cuban. They were all taken by bus on the same day to somewhere in the south, the trip lasted two days.
Brought to the border of Ukraine
The BBC reports that Somalian Awad became suspicious when he found himself being brought to a tent city guarded by the military on the Ukrainian border. Speaking to the BBC, he did not specify the exact location where he was, but he did not hide the fact that Ukraine is nearby.
“We were told it would be a one-year contract, with preparation and various options, with a good salary and medical. And they didn’t say anything about the Ukrainian border and the war. Everything we were told turned out to be a lie,” said the Somali.
General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Telegram/Soldiers of Ukraine
The Somali did not answer the question of whether he knew about the war waged by Russia in Ukraine. However, he testified that the migrants refused their signatures on the contracts, even though this significantly worsened their conditions – they were fed with inedible products, and there were few of them.
After that, the intimidation allegedly started. “They said that if we don’t fulfill what we signed, we will go to prison for 10 years. Everyone was scared, but I wasn’t, I answered that I don’t know what I signed there, because it wasn’t my language, – said Avadas about his defense strategy. “I’m a refugee, not a soldier.”
According to the Somali, the whole group followed the same logic. December 4 they were told their contracts would be terminated and they would return to the detention center, after which they would presumably be deported. Four Somalis received reports of this. Avad says he didn’t get it.
They said that if we do not fulfill what we signed, we will go to prison for 10 years. Everyone was scared, but I wasn’t, I replied that I don’t know what I signed there because it wasn’t my language. I am a refugee, not a soldier.
Awad did not answer the question of which is worse – to be a soldier in a foreign war or to return to Somalia, where there is a risk of death, in correspondence with the BBC.
Recruiting foreigners for the war with Ukraine is nothing new in Russia. Already in the first weeks after Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, it was announced that mercenaries were being sought among pro-Russian armed groups in Syria. Then it moved to migrants who came to work from former Soviet countries. These attempts were overshadowed by a huge campaign in prisons, carried out by Yevgeny Prigozhin. But even at that time, foreigners were not refused – both those who came for money and criminals who were caught.
Information about this comes from the representatives of the Ukrainian authorities, because the deaths of foreigners are recorded, they are captured on the battlefield. According to the latest data, there are emigrants from Nepal, Iraq, Zambia, Estonia, Tajikistan, as well as Somalia.
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2024-08-16 21:11:43
