Around 1,000 citizens of Tajikistan were being held in airports in Moscow “without proper sanitary conditions” over the weekend, the country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Over 950 Tajik citizens were being held in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport alone, the ministry said, where they had been placed in a “temporary accommodation zone”. A total of 322 had been allowed to enter Russia following hours of waiting, with 306 to be deported in “restrictive measures applied exclusively to Tajik citizens”, the statement continued.
Dozens more Tajik citizens were stuck in Moscow’s Zhukovsky, Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports, the ministry reported, adding that diplomats and members of Russia’s Tajik community were delivering food to Vnukovo airport due to a “lack of sufficient hot meals for the stranded Tajik citizens”.
The Foreign Ministry building in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan
The ministry’s reports of Tajiks being held in Moscow airports came a day after it advised its citizens against all travel to Russia “unless absolutely necessary”. On Friday, the ministry had expressed its concern to Semyon Grigoryev, Russia’s ambassador to Tajikistan, about the “increasing number of unjustified cases” of Tajik citizens being denied entry to Russia.
Earlier last week, reports had emerged in Russian and Central Asian media that around 180 cars of up to 1,000 Tajik citizens were stuck at a land border crossing into Russia from Kazakhstan, with border guards reportedly questioning them and looking through their phones in checks not applied to citizens of other countries.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Friday that “heightened security measures” had been introduced at the country’s border crossings in the wake of the attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue, for which Russia has arrested 12 Tajik citizens. Since the attack in March, Russia’s estimated one million-strong Tajik migrant community has faced increasing discrimination.
Zakharova called reports of Tajik citizens’ vehicles being stuck at Russia’s border with Kazakhstan “exaggerated” and said the security measures in place were “temporary and applied irrespective of nationality”.
