The four men accused of a deadly\u00a0terror attack on Moscow\u2019s Crocus City\u00a0concert hall last week\u00a0were quickly identified by Russian authorities as being from Tajikistan,\u00a0a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. <\/p>\n
In the hours after the attack, videos began surfacing on Russian social media channels of the police detaining and brutally abusing the alleged\u00a0attackers, with one appearing to show a suspect having part of\u00a0his ear cut off and subsequently forced into his mouth. The men had\u00a0been in Russia as migrant workers on either temporary or expired visas, authorities said. <\/p>\n
Russians are understandably shocked and saddened by the attack. But in the days since, that emotion \u2013 combined with the disturbing videos \u2013 appears to have unleashed a wave of xenophobia from some towards Central Asian migrant workers in general. <\/p>\n
A\u00a0torrent of abuse has also reportedly been directed\u00a0towards a barbershop in the city of Ivanovo, where one of the alleged\u00a0attackers worked. The owner of the shop told\u00a0Russian\u00a0journalists that her phone had been ringing \u201cnon stop\u201d with death threats, and is quoted by a Russian daily newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets,\u00a0<\/strong>as saying, \u201cI\u2019m pregnant and I don\u2019t know what to do. I\u2019m afraid to go outside.\u201d <\/p>\n As a consequence,\u00a0Russian President Vladimir Putin\u00a0now finds himself in an increasingly delicate position with regard\u00a0<\/strong>to\u00a0migrant workers, who occupy vital roles in the Russian workforce \u2014 particularly while the country is at war. <\/p>\n Perhaps wary of a split in Russian society, Putin on Wednesday called for Russia to remain united. <\/p>\n \u201cWe must never forget that we are a multinational, multi-religious country. We must always treat our brothers, representatives of other faiths with respect, as we always do \u2014 Muslims, Jews, everyone,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n Migrants from the former Soviet Union\u2019s Central Asian states \u2014\u00a0Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan \u2014\u00a0have traditionally been a valuable source of cheap labour in Russia. <\/p>\n Generally, they\u2019ve occupied the jobs that many\u00a0Russians feel are beneath\u00a0them, such as taxi drivers, truck drivers or supermarket workers. The money they send back in the form of remittances has been an important driver of growth in their home countries. <\/p>\n \u201cThe police are trying to pretend that they are actively fighting ethnic crime and preventing terrorist attacks. Actually, they\u2019re robbing migrants. I have dozens of complaints about migrants being stopped by police, and (the police) have stolen whatever they liked,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n Human Rights Watch, in their annual world report said that\u00a0\u201cRussian police continued to racially profile non-Slav migrants and\u00a0ethnic minorities\u00a0and subject them to unsubstantiated ID checks and\u00a0detentions, often prolonged, in inhumane conditions. Some have been\u00a0physically assaulted\u201d. <\/p>\n \u201cIt gave them permission to speak their mind freely and not be shut down or criticized by other parts of society because they\u2019re fighting for Russia \u2026 whether it\u2019s online, whether it\u2019s on the real front (in Ukraine),\u201d he said. <\/p>\n In one channel called the GreyZone, which has half a million followers, a user posted\u00a0a comment saying: \u201cWe need to boycott the service they provide: don\u2019t eat in their cafes, don\u2019t get your hair cut with them, don\u2019t ride in their taxi, don\u2019t BUY ANYTHING FROM THEM AT ALL. We need to spread the word.\u201d <\/p>\n A user in\u00a0another channel, with 200,000 followers, suggested there was no space for anyone to feel sorry for migrants in Russia. \u201cIt is important not to forget that they are not victims at all, but the real executioners and murderers of good Russian people,\u201d the user wrote. \u201cThere is no reason to feel sorry for them, they only deserve contempt and being immediately kicked back to their home, into the cesspool called Tajikistan.\u201d <\/p>\n Against this backdrop of simmering xenophobia,\u00a0the Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry issued\u00a0a travel warning for its citizens Monday, saying they\u00a0<\/strong>should refrain from traveling to Russian territory \u201cuntil the removal of additional security measures and the regime of enhanced control of passage through the state border.\u201d <\/p>\n According to Umerov,\u00a0there are some 7 million migrants in Russia, of whom around 80% are from Central Asia. <\/p>\n \u201cMigrants work for much lower\u00a0salaries than ordinary Russians, and are more willing to work in much more difficult and harsh conditions,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The salaries offered by Russia, and subsequently the remittances that migrants send back to their families, serve the dual function\u00a0of filling\u00a0key jobs\u00a0in the Russian labour market and boosting GDPs\u00a0for migrants\u2019 home nations. <\/p>\n The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development forecast in September 2023 that economic\u00a0growth in Central Asia would hit 5.9% in 2024, with remittances playing a role. Tajikistan was expected to see\u00a0the biggest GDP\u00a0growth in the region, reaching 7.5% in 2023 and 2024, the report said, thanks in part to \u201cthe inflow of remittances from Russia.\u201d <\/p>\n Umerov noted that since Putin launched his full-scale\u00a0invasion of Ukraine two years ago, the economy\u2019s reliance on migrant workers\u00a0has increased. <\/p>\n \u201cMigrants are crucial for several sectors of running the Russian economy. In several sectors, it\u2019s impossible to have the level of stability it has without the labour force of migrants,\u201d Umerov said. \u201cRussia crucially needs it \u2013 without, it\u00a0would be just impossible.\u201d <\/p>\n Research by\u00a0the Institute of Economics at the Russian Academy of Sciences,\u00a0<\/strong>reported by the Izvestia newspaper in December and cited by Reuters,\u00a0<\/strong>found Russia was likely short of\u00a0some 4.8 million workers in 2023, with some of the key sectors affected\u00a0<\/strong>being construction, drivers and retail. <\/p>\n The invasion of Ukraine has had a significant impact on the available Russian workforce. Thousands of Russian men have been mobilized to fight in Ukraine, where many thousands have already been killed, depending on estimates. Hundreds of thousands more are believed to have fled the country in September 2022, after Putin called for a partial mobilization. <\/p>\n Since the attack on Crocus City Hall, Putin and his advisers, including internal and foreign intelligence chiefs, have sought\u00a0to level the accusation that Ukraine was somehow involved in the\u00a0attacks, without presenting any concrete evidence. <\/p>\n Ukraine and\u00a0Western nations\u00a0have been quick to shut that notion down. <\/p>\n Putin\u00a0has not, however, pointed the finger of blame toward Emomali Rahmon, president of Tajikistan, despite all evidence suggesting that the attackers were radicalized by the jihadist group\u00a0ISIS-K, which is known to target recruits in Tajikistan. <\/p>\n On Sunday, the Kremlin said Putin had spoken with Rahmon and that special services in\u00a0Russia and\u00a0Tajikistan\u00a0\u201care working closely in the field of countering terrorism, and this work will be intensified.\u201d <\/p>\n Umerov\u00a0notes that Putin is toeing a fine line. In a world where the Russian president has so few allies, having alienated the West with his war on Ukraine,\u00a0he cannot be seen to be making enemies out of friends. <\/p>\n \u201cPutin just cannot admit that there are problems in Russia-Tajikistan relations, especially right now,\u201d Umerov said. \u201cTajikistan is one of the closest allies that Putin has, and when Russia is so isolated, it is not in a position to pick which countries it can be in relationships with.\u201d <\/p>\n\n The four men accused of a deadly\u00a0terror attack on Moscow\u2019s Crocus City\u00a0concert hall last week\u00a0were quickly identified by Russian authorities as being from Tajikistan,\u00a0a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. In the hours after the attack, videos began surfacing on Russian social media channels of the police detaining and brutally abusing the alleged\u00a0attackers, with one <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} \u2018It\u2019s going to be a very, very tough period of time\u2019<\/h2>\n