Russian Travel Rules Tightened for Uzbeks

New rules for people travelling to Russia have further reduced the already limited freedom of movement of Uzbek nationals, who now face huge bureaucratic hurdles when trying to leave the country.

Hours and days wasted in visa queues, ruined plans, and harassment at the border have become commonplace since a reciprocal travel agreement signed by presidents Vladimir Putin and Islam Karimov came into effect on August 13.

Observers blame the changes on Tashkent’s attempt to restrict movement across its borders in the wake of the May 13 violence in Andijan, when police opened fire on crowds of demonstrators. Many people from the city fled, mainly to nearby Kyrgyzstan.

Under the new system, Uzbekistan and Russia will apply the same travel regulations to each other as for any foreign state. Previously, their citizens benefited from the laxer regulations that former Soviet states commonly apply in dealing with each other.

Uzbek nationals must now obtain an exit visa from their own authorities before they can enter Russia, a common destination for migrant labourers and other travellers. They will not be allowed to buy a plane ticket unless they can show this visa.

People in Uzbekistan already have a stamp in their passport showing where they live – effectively a residence permit. To go to Russia, they will now need a second stamp verifying the residence stamp. Ravshan Pulatov of the Uzbek interior ministry, which handles residence issues, said the change was connected “with increasing measures in the war on terror”.

Russian passport holders – there is no dual nationality arrangement – will be affected mainly by a rule that they can only go to Uzbekistan on a full international passport, rather than on an “internal passport”, the domestic ID document that many Russians use. At Uzbek passport control they must also produce a “certificate of return” – proof that they will be leaving the country to go back to Russia.

Complying with these rules means even more form-filling, queuing and nervous waiting. Both the Russian embassy in Tashkent and the local police departments which issue visas to Uzbek nationals have been swamped.

Surat Ikramov, who heads the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists of Uzbekistan, says there has been a rush of attempts by ethnic Uzbeks in the Fergana valley, where Andijan is located, to secure exit documents. But in Tashkent, observers note that the police visa offices are busiest in parts of town where there are a lot of ethnic Russians. These people hold Uzbek passports but often have relatives whom they wish to visit in Russia.

People start lining up at the Russian embassy at two or three in the morning, and anyone who turns up in the middle of the day can find themselves behind 50 others.

When Andrei Agafonov, the embassy’s legal consultant, goes outside to speak to those waiting in line, he is peppered with frantic questions.

A young man asks him whether he can go to work in the United Arab Emirates on his Russian passport. Apparently not.

“Can a six-year-old girl return to Russia on this warrant of authority?” asks an elderly woman of Korean origin, whose granddaughter came to visit her in Tashkent over the summer. Agafonov looks through the paperwork – this time the answer is yes.

“I can’t stand in line. I’m 80. Give me an answer, and then I’ll leave,” says an elderly Uzbek woman in broken Russian, who wants to know about exit visas. An increasingly exasperated Agafonov tells her to go home.

After half an hour, Agafonov vanishes into the embassy, promising to come out again after lunch. But he never returns.

There are plenty of people whose circumstances mean that the bureaucracy they face is even more laborious.

Pensioner Dilbar Abdurahimova’s 13-year-old grandson was born in Tashkent but lives with his father, a Russian citizen, in Moscow. He comes back for a visit every year, but this year he is stuck here. Abdurahimova has been told that in order to leave Uzbekistan her grandson now requires to submit his birth certificate, original copies of his parents’ passports, a document signed by them and certified by a notary saying that she can accompany him back to Moscow, and another certified document to the same effect.

“It used to be enough to have letters from the parents agreeing that their child can fly unaccompanied… but now I have to register a pile of documents, and my grandson probably won’t make it to Moscow for the start of the school year,” she said.

Anastasia Khojaeva, a pensioner and a Russian national, is also trapped in Uzbekistan. Her problems began when she attempted to travel to Tashkent by train via Kazakstan but was stopped on the border by Uzbek guards who refused to accept her Soviet passport, though it is valid until September.

“They told me that there is no such country as the USSR, and that they wouldn’t let me into Uzbekistan,” she said.

Khojaeva eventually got to Tashkent but since she still has no entry stamp, she cannot get the documentation she will need when she wants to leave.

Tatyana, an 18-year-old Uzbek national, is in complete limbo after Russian authorities deported her from Moscow’s Domodedovo airport last week.

“The frontier guards screamed and yelled at us,” she said, claiming that the Russians offered no explanation for her deportation.

Since her passport was not stamped when she arrived in Uzbekistan, she is effectively trapped there.

“I am up in the air. Officially, I am not anywhere,” she said.

Tatyana and her mother joined the long line outside the Russian embassy, but Agafonov was unable to help her – she missed a crucial step in the paper-trail by failing to request proof of deportation when she was thrown out of Moscow.

Uzbekistan’s relationship with Russia has improved markedly in recent months as a direct result of its estrangement from the United States, which was critical of its behaviour over the Andijan violence. The Uzbek government was so angry that it ordered the US military to leave the airbase it had been using since late 2001.

Moscow clearly welcomes the volte face from a country which spent much of the Nineties underline its political separateness from Russia, and it has reciprocated by acting on Uzbek security concerns in a way it might not have done before.

In June, Russia’s intelligence service arrested 14 Uzbek nationals in the town of Ivanovo, on suspicion that they had been involved in the Andijan uprising. Uzbek secret service officers reportedly attended the interrogations.

Some analysts think Russia’s government is also serving its own aims by making it harder for people from Uzbekistan to visit. For example, its European neighbours might like to see it impose more stringent border controls to stem the flow of illicit drugs and human traffic coming through Central Asia.

“In trying to drive the West out of Central Asia, Russia is itself turning its back on this region and towards Europe,” said a Tashkent-based political analyst, who did not want to be named. “Don’t believe that Moscow is ready to do anything just to preserve its presence in this region – it will do just enough as its egocentric approach tells it to.”

However durable the emerging alliance between Tashkent and Moscow proves, the higher bureacratic fences facing travellers are likely to remain.

At the Moscow embassy, the walls are still festooned with posters commemorating the May anniversary of the end of the Second World War, event though that was more than three years ago. Anyone lucky enough to reach the front of the visa queue will find themselves in a lobby under the watchful stare of photos not only of Putin and Karimov, but Stalin as well.