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During the inter-ethnic strife in Chechnya and the First and Second Chechen Wars for independence hundreds of thousands of Chechen refugees have left their homes and left the republic for elsewhere in Russia and abroad.
The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) reports that hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes in Chechnya since 1990. [1] This included majority of Chechnya non-Chechen population of 300,000 (mostly Russians, but also Armenians, Ingush, Georgians, Ukrainians and many more) who had left the republic in the early 1990s and as of 2008 never returned.
Many ethnic Chechens have also moved to Moscow and other Russian cities. According to the 2008 study by the Norwegian Refugee Council, some 139,000 Chechens remained displaced in the Russian Federation.
In the nearby republic of Ingushetia, at the peak of the refugee crisis after the start of the Second Chechen War in 2000, estimated 240,000 refugees almost doubled the Ingushetia's pre-war population of 300,000 (350,000 including the refugees from the Ingush-Ossetian conflict) and resulting in an epidemic of tuberculosis. [2] Estimated 325,000 was the total number of people that have entered Ingushetia as refugees in the first year of the Second Chechen War. [3] Some 185,000 were in the republic already by November 1999 [4] and 215,000 lived in Ingushetia by June 2000. [3] In October 1999 the border with Ingushetia was closed down by the Russian military and a refugee convoy bombed after being turned away.
Thousands of them were pressured to return by the Russian military already in December 1999, [5] and the refugee camps were forcibly closed after 2001 by the new Chechen government of President Akhmad Kadyrov and the new Ingush government of President Murat Zyazikov. [6] About 180,000 Chechens remained in Ingushetia by February 2002 [7] and 150,000 by June 2002, most of them housed in a "tent city" camps, abandoned farms and factories and disused trains, or living with sympathetic families. [8] As of early 2007, less than 20,000 Chechens remained in Ingushetia and many of them were expected to integrate locally rather than return to Chechnya.
As of 2006, more than 100,000 people remain internally displaced persons (IDP) within Chechnya, most of whom live in substandard housing and poverty. All official IDP centers in the republic were closed down and the foreign NGO aid severely limited by the government (including the ban of the Danish Refugee Council).
Since 2003 there is a sharp surge of Chechen asylum-seekers arriving abroad, at a time when major combat operations had largely ceased. One explanation is the process of "Chechenization", which empowered former separatists Ahmed Kadyrov and his son Ramzan Kadyrov as the leaders of Chechnya (indeed, Chechen refugees indicated that they feared Chechen security forces more than Russian troops). Another explanation is that after a decade of war and lawlessness, many Chechens have given up hope of ever rebuilding a normal life at home and instead try to start a new life in exile.
In 2003, some 33,000 Russian citizens (over 90% of them presumed to be Chechens) applied for Asylum in the European Union (EU), according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, making them the largest group of new refugees arriving in developed nations. According to unofficial reports from January 2008, the number of Chechens in Europe may reach 70,000. [9] According to another estimate from March 2009, there were some 130,000 Chechen refugees in Europe, including former fighters. [10] In September 2009 Kadyrov said that Chechnya would open representative offices in Europe in an attempt to convince the Chechen migrant communities living there to return to their homeland. [11]
Austria granted asylum rights to more than 2,000 Chechen refugees in 2007, bringing the total number to 17,000 in January 2008, the largest diaspora in Europe then. [9] As of 2018, there were some 30,000 Chechens residing in Austria. [12]
As of early 2008, some 7,000-10,000 Chechens live in Belgium, [9] many of them in Aarschot. At least 2,000 of them were granted political asylum in 2003. [13]
In 2003, refugee camps in the Czech Republic were said to be "overwhelmed" due to an overwhelming number of Chechen refugees. [14]
As of 2009, Denmark is one of the six countries in Europe with the biggest Chechen diasporas. [11]
As of early 2008, about 10,000 Chechens live in France. The largest Chechen communities in France exist in Nice (where there were reports of sharp conflict with the immigrants from North Africa [15] ), Strasbourg and Paris (the home of the Chechen-French Center). Chechens also live in Orléans, Le Mans, Besançon, Montpellier, Toulouse and Tours. As of 2008, thousands more are trying to get to France from Poland. [16]
As of early 2008, approximately 10,000 Chechens live in Germany. [9]
In Poland, almost 3,600 Chechens have applied for refugee status in the first eight months of 2007 alone and over 6,000 in the next four months. [17] [18] As of 2008, the Chechens are the greatest group (90% in 2007 [18] ) of refugees arriving in Poland, on the eastern border of the EU.
Spain has granted hundreds of Chechen families asylum since 1999. [19]
Thousands of others settled in the other EU countries, such as Sweden or Finland.
Of 12,000 Chechen refugees who arrived in Azerbaijan, most moved on to Europe later (leaving some 5,000 in 2003, [20] 2,000 in 2007, [21] 586 in 2014, and 377 in 2019 [22] ). [23]
As of early 2008, several hundred people live in the Canadian community. [9]
Of some 4,000 Chechens who have sought safety in neighbouring Georgia, the majority have settled in Pankisi Gorge and over 1,100 registered refugees remain there as of 2008.
Some 3,000 to 4,000 Chechens arrived in Turkey, of which most also moved on further, but as of 2005 some 1,500 stayed. [24] Many of the Chechen refugees in Turkey are yet to be given official refugee status by the Turkish government, without this status they will be unable to legally attend school or have jobs. [25]
Ukraine is the main transit country for Chechen refugees traveling to Europe (some others travel through Belarus). There is also a small number of Chechens settled in Crimea. Since Yanukovich was elected, he has begun harassing the Chechen refugee settlements through police raids and sudden deportations, sometimes even separating families. [26]
As of early 2008, some 2,000-3,000 refugees live in the United Arab Emirates. [9]
In the United Kingdom there is a large number of Chechen refugees. Some of them are wanted by Russia but the UK government refuses to extradite them on grounds of concern for human rights. Some of the original Chechen separatist government figures, such as Akhmed Zakayev relocated to the UK.
A small, but growing Chechen community exists in the United States, in particular California and New Jersey.
Both Azerbaijan and Georgia have extradited some Chechen refugees to Russia in violation of their obligations under international law.[ citation needed ] The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Georgia violated their rights.
During the 2008 South Ossetia war, many of the more than 1,000 Chechen refugees in Pankisi Gorge fled towards Turkey along with their Georgian neighbours. [27] [28] [29]
Chechnya, officially the Chechen Republic, is a republic of Russia. It is situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, between the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The republic forms a part of the North Caucasian Federal District, and shares land borders with the country of Georgia to its south; with the Russian republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia-Alania to its east, north, and west; and with Stavropol Krai to its northwest.
Akhmed Halidovich Zakayev is a Chechen statesman, political and military figure of the unrecognised Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI). Having previously been a Deputy Prime Minister, he now serves as Prime Minister of the ChRI government-in-exile. He was also the Foreign Minister of the Ichkerian government, appointed by Aslan Maskhadov shortly after his 1997 election, and again in 2006 by Abdul Halim Sadulayev. An active participant in the Russian-Chechen wars, Zakayev took part in the battles for Grozny and the defense of Goyskoye, along with other military operations, as well as in high-level negotiations with the Russian side.
The Second Chechen War took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 to April 2009.
The history of Chechnya may refer to the history of the Chechens, of their land Chechnya, or of the land of Ichkeria.
The Chechens, historically also known as Kisti and Durdzuks, are a Northeast Caucasian ethnic group of the Nakh peoples native to the North Caucasus. They are the largest ethnic group in the region and refer to themselves as Nokhchiy. The vast majority of Chechens are Muslims and live in Chechnya, a republic of Russia.
Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov is a Russian politician and current Head of the Chechen Republic. He was formerly affiliated to the Chechen independence movement, through his father who was the separatist-appointed mufti of Chechnya. He is a colonel general in the Russian military.
Ingushetia or Ingushetiya, officially the Republic of Ingushetia, is a republic of Russia located in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe. The republic is part of the North Caucasian Federal District, and shares land borders with the country of Georgia to its south; and borders the Russian republics of North Ossetia–Alania to its west and north and Chechnya to its east and northeast.
Ruslan (Khamzat) Germanovich Gelayev was a prominent commander in the Chechen resistance movement against Russia, in which he played a significant, yet controversial, military and political role in the 1990s and early 2000s. Gelayev was commonly viewed as an abrek and a well-respected, ruthless fighter. His operations spread well beyond the borders of Chechnya and even outside the Russian Federation and into Georgia. He was killed while leading a raid into the Russian Republic of Dagestan in 2004.
The Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, known simply as Ichkeria, and also known as Chechnya, is a former de facto state that controlled most of the former Checheno-Ingush ASSR.
Doku Khamatovich Umarov, also known as Dokka Umarov as well as by his Arabized name of Dokka Abu Umar, was a Chechen mujahid in North Caucasus. Umarov was a major military figure in both wars in Chechnya during the 1990s and 2000s, before becoming the leader of the greater insurgency in the North Caucasus. He was active mostly in south-western Chechnya, near and across the borders with Ingushetia and Georgia.
The Kists are a Chechen subethnic group in Georgia. They primarily live in the Pankisi Gorge, in the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti, where there are approximately 9,000 Kist people. The modern Kists are not to be confused with the historical term Kists, an ethnonym of Georgian origin, which was used to refer to the Nakh peoples in the Middle Ages.
The Republic of Chechnya is a constituent republic and federal subject of the Russian Federation. It is located in the Caucasus region in southwest Russia. It is the political successor of the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. From a centralized form of government during the existence of the Soviet Union, the republic's political system went upheavals during the 1990s with the establishment of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, leading to the First Chechen War and the Second Chechen War which left the republic in total devastation. In 2000, following Russia's renewed rule, a local, republican form of government was established in the republic under the control of the Russian federal government.
In June 2000, the North Caucasian Chechen separatist-led Chechen insurgents added suicide bombing to their tactics in their struggle against Russia. Since then, there have been dozens of suicide attacks within and outside the republic of Chechnya, resulting in thousands of casualties among Russian security personnel and civilians. The profiles of the suicide bombers have varied, as have the circumstances surrounding the bombings.
Melfi Al Hussaini Al Harbi, more commonly known as Muhannad, and also known as Abu Anas, was a Mujahid Emir (commander) fighting in Chechnya. Following the death of Abu Hafs al-Urduni on 26 November 2006, he was named leader of the battalion of foreign fighters once commanded by the notorious Saudi-born Ibn al-Khattab.
Khuseyn Vakhaevich Gakayev, also known as Emir Mansur and Emir Hussein, was a mujahid Emir (commander) fighting in Chechnya. He was one of the most senior field commanders still operating in the North Caucasus prior to his death on 24 January 2013.
The Lopota incident, known in Georgia as the special operation against an illegal armed group in Lopota, was an armed incident where the Georgian special forces engaged an unknown paramilitary group of about 17 unknown individuals which had allegedly taken several people hostage in the remote Caucasus gorge of Lopota near the border between Georgia and the Russia's Republic of Dagestan.
Ekaterina Sokirianskaia is a Russian human rights researcher, journalist, writer, professor of political science. Her researches dedicated mostly to the region of North Caucasus, where she worked at "Memorial", non-governmental human rights center from 2003 to 2008 as researcher, and at the Grozny University, where she taught political science.
Anti-Chechen sentiment, Chechenophobia, anti-Chechenism, or Nokhchophobia, refers to fear, dislike, hostility, hatred, discrimination, and racism towards ethnic Chechens, the Chechen language, or the Chechen culture in general. Anti-Chechen sentiment has been historically strong in Russia, and to some degree has spread to other countries in the former Soviet Union, such as Azerbaijan, to Europe, the Middle East, and to the United States. For decades, the main causes of hatred against Chechens have been largely due to the created narrative which depicts a violent mentality of Chechens, the association of Chechens with Islamic extremism, and Russian imperialist propaganda targeted at Chechens.
The 2018-2019 protests in Ingushetia are thousands of people, initially unauthorized round-the-clock protest in Magas against the Agreement on Securing the Border Between Regions, signed by the head of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov on September 26, 2018, as well as its ratification by the deputies of the People's Assembly of the Republic of Ingushetia. The protest began on October 4, 2018 and was declared indefinite. On the fifth day, the rally was sanctioned by the authorities until October 15. The break of the round-the-clock protest lasted from 18 to 31 October 2018. The next rally took place on November 27, 2018, on the day of the consideration by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation of the request of the head of the Republic of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, on the compliance of the Constitution of the Russian Federation with the Agreement on the Establishment of the Administrative Boundary between Ingushetia and Chechnya. After a four-month break on March 26, 2019, the rally in Magas was resumed and declared indefinite.
Magomed Torijev is a journalist, human rights activist, expert on the North Caucasus and republics of the former Soviet Union. He's a representative of the Ingush opposition in Europe, an authorized representative of the Ingush Independence Committee, an organization whose main goal is to gain independence of Ingushetia from Russia. He worked for Radio Liberty/Free Europe, Prague Watchdog, Ingushetiya.org. He participated in the UN missions to Chechnya and Ingushetia, as well as in the OSCE mission to Ukraine.