“Please tell them to send more trains!”I heard this happen last week when I visited a transit migrant camp on Russia’s border with Kazakhstan, full of Uzbek migrants desperate to be repatriated to Uzbekistan.
People arriving at the camp near Kinel station in Russia’s Samara region in late August from all over Russia. The camp is designed for 900 other people, however, officials say there are more than 4,000 more people, adding at least 43 children. Everyone needs to exercise in Uzbekistan, however, exercises are only done once a week and can accommodate 950 other people. The repatriation of citizens of the existing camp can take more than a month, not to mention those who continue to arrive daily.
Migrant personnel in Russia have been greatly affected by the monetary consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, and without any Russian government social or their own embassies, many have long sought to return home. and Uzbekistan, like many countries, closed their borders. Migrants have faced abnormal and ad hoc repatriation measures. In the absence of data and for fear of the reintroduction of stricter travel restrictions by the end of the year, many clung to rumors that they could take an exercise home.
A woman whose planned departure in April thwarted by the pandemic has not noticed her children for 4 years; another said she had only worked a day after arriving in Russia and had been fired in March, surviving with the help of fellow migrants ever since. Permits for many immigrants to be in Russia may have expired on September 15.
Newcomers buy small tents or build their own with sticks and canvases, the local government supplies water twice a day and has installed latrines, something some migrants have pointed out as very few and overused. vulnerable to rain and colder nights. There is no on-site medical care or tests to detect the virus guilty of Covid-19. One woman who expressed fear at the camp administration said, “We didn’t ask you to come here. “
The field direction supposedly needs to ensure that as little data imaginable about the field is disseminated. According to the hounds they visited last week, the camp management demanded that the migrants not talk to them. Migrants said no Uzbek diplomat has yet visited the camp and that others cannot access consulates over the phone.
Russia and Uzbekistan will have to paint together to facilitate the repatriation of migrants who, feeling abandoned, have been slow to reach the border and stay while they wait.