by Tony Iozzo
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MOSCOW, Russia – The attempted arrest of a single rape suspect has snowballed into a massive citywide raid on immigrants across Russia, though the suspect was not an immigrant.

Khalimat and Magomed Rasulov, natives of Russia’s Dagestan region, were involved with an altercation with police on July 27 which lead to a fight, and a head injury to a police officer. Police had come to arrest one of the brothers on rape charges at a Moscow market in which they vended watermelons, when a relative of the brothers struck an officer with brass knuckles; gravely injuring the officer.

Two days later on July 29, Moscow police began raiding street markets, underground factories, and the subway system all across the city and arresting immigrants whom didn’t have requisite paperwork on their person. Russia’s Federal Migration Service has reported that nearly 1,500 immigrants have been detained thus far, with almost 600 of those individuals being held in a temporary tent camp that some have stated resembles a war zone.

“This is absolutely normal. In any society, in any country, if an emergency situation happens, then the government and society begin to act more harshly,” Moscow’s mayor, Sergei S. Sobyanin has stated.

The nearly 1,500 immigrants have included individuals from Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Syria, Morocco, Kyrgystan, Uzbekistan, and Egypt. The nearly 600 occupants of the tent camp were detained during a raid at an underground textile factory which had been shut down in 2009. According to Mayor Sobynin, counterfeit products were being made on three floors. There has been an inundation of the city’s detention centers due to all of the raids in the past few weeks, so the Emergency Services Ministries constructed the tent camp to accommodate.

The Ministries has claimed that the tent camp has the potential to accommodate over 900 individuals, however many have reported cramped conditions in too little tents, with only four outdoor showers and inadequate portable toilets.

Vladimir Lukin, Russia’s human rights ombudsman, has expressed concerns that the conditions at the tent camp “do not comply with government provisions.”

Russian authorities have prepared a bill that would create an additional 83 detention centers across the country.

Some point to the rampant corruption among police and politicians who charge illegal immigrants high fees for legal documents. It is widely believed that the July 29 incident that spawned these raids escalated due to the Rasulov’s refusal to pay the officers a bribe.

Meanwhile, the citywide raids have continued almost every day, and they are supported by a majority of Russians who attribute most crimes to illegal immigration. Mayor Sobynin, who is up for reelection on September 8, has seen his poll numbers rise. His opponents have also taken on the issue.

“For me this isn’t just a number. For me it means one simple thing: that the women in my building are afraid to go out on the street at night,” stated Aleksei A. Navalny, the most prominent mayoral challenger.

But some do not support the raids with the same fervor that the mayoral candidates do.

“Everything about this massive sweep violates Russia’s obligations under international law. Prolonged detention without counsel, ethnic profiling, inhuman conditions-it should stop now,” stated Human Rights Watch’s director in Russia, Tanya Lokshina.

For more information, please see:

NY Times – Russia Steps Up Raids Against Migrants – 12 August 2013

RIA Novosti – Police Round Up Illegal Migrants Across Russia – 12 August 2013

The Atlantic – Behind Russia’s Migrant Raids, a Vast Network of Bribes and Opportunism – 7 August 2013

The Guardian – Russia Detains Immigrants in ‘Concentration Camps’ – 6 August 2013