Document #2051048
RFE/RL – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (Author)
As deadly violence erupted on the Kyrgyz-Tajik border last week, two peaceful Kyrgyz-majority districts of Tajikistan -- located hundreds of kilometers away from the conflict zone -- found themselves dragged into media reports of “evictions” and “deportations.”
Kyrgyz media falsely reported that Tajikistan began deporting ethnic Kyrgyz from its Lakhsh and Murghob districts, sparking a barrage of angry social-media comments.
RFE/RL contacted authorities in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- including local mayors and police -- as well as several ethnic Kyrgyz in Lakhsh to establish what was happening. It also contacted several residents of Kyrgyzstan who say they know people who were deported from Tajikistan.
Neither Tajik nor Kyrgyz officials could confirm reports that ethnic Kyrgyz were being sent out of Tajikistan.
But both sides said in recent years and months, Tajik authorities have indeed been telling ethnic Kyrgyz they cannot obtain Kyrgyz passports unless they first renounce their Tajik citizenship.
Tajikistan doesn’t allow dual nationality with any foreign country except for Russia. Kyrgyzstan prohibits dual citizenship with any of its bordering states -- Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and China.
“We do indeed tell people that they must choose between the two citizenships,” Faizullo Barotzoda, the mayor of Lakhsh district, told RFE/RL on May 5.
But the mayor insisted “the requirement is not related to the latest border conflict” between the two Central Asian countries.
Over the past year, about 100 ethnic Kyrgyz from Lakhsh have given up their Tajik citizenship and chosen to keep their Kyrgyz passports, Barotzoda said. About the same number of people decided to renounce their Kyrgyz passports and keep their Tajik citizenship, he added.
Asked about deportations of ethnic Kyrgyz from Tajikistan, Barotzoda said: “There have been cases in which Kyrgyz citizens who violated the immigration rules -- a 60-day, visa-free stay -- were deported from Tajikistan.”
But he said he wasn’t aware of any such deportation since the border conflict erupted on April 28.
Barotzoda did, however, give RFE/RL a list of 42 Tajik citizens, most of them ethnic Kyrgyz, who were sent back to Tajikistan through the Karamik border crossing between May 3 and May 6.
RFE/RL has asked Kyrgyzstan’s Border Service for comment but had not received a response as of May 7.
The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry claimed it knows of Tajikistan’s “expulsions of Kyrgyz citizens, both those visiting or permanently living in Lakhsh.” But it offered no evidence of the claim.
The ministry added on May 4 that it’s been closely watching the situation since mid-March amid reports of unannounced inspections of ethnic Kyrgyz people’s documents by Tajik authorities in Lakhsh.
Meanwhile, in the town of Murghob in eastern Tajikistan, district Mayor Husniya Rajabzoda said “no deportations” are taking place. Ethnic Kyrgyz make up 60 percent of Murghob’s population of some 16,000 people.
In Kyrgyzstan, the border service of the State Committee for National Security denied statements by the head of a Russian human rights organization that some Tajiks flying in from Russia had been beaten at airports in Bishkek and Osh since the border violence in late April.
Valentina Chupik, a Moscow-based human rights activist, said Kyrgyz officials should "do something with their employees" at the airports to prevent the harassment, which she claimed included beatings and extortion.
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