By Megan Merrill
Staff Writer


Mobutu Sese Soko's police arrested Arsen Mandanoi's father for belonging to a socialist opposition party. Mobutu's forces later killed Mandanoi's sister and beat his mother so badly she was hospitalized. Afraid for his life, Mandanoi fled Zaire in 1992 for Russia, the only country that would give him a visa.

But now Mandanoi is preparing to flee Russia as well.

"I ran away from my country," the 35-year-old refugee said. "But here it is like a prison. I'm not free. We are nothing here."

Like most African refugees in Russia, Mandanoi lives in legal limbo and grim poverty. He is consistently harassed by police and twice has ended up in the hospital after beatings by skinheads. After 11 years of living in fear, Mandanoi is getting out.

"Here there is no life, no future," he said. "I'd prefer to live in a country where there is law."

More than 700 people from Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), Ethiopia, Sudan and other African countries are actively registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Russia, 12 percent of the total registered asylum seekers in the country.

Some, like Mandanoi, escaped political violence in the '90s and could obtain visas only to Russia, which was vulnerable to visa scams and bribery after the fall of communism. Others were students in the Soviet era who got stranded after graduation due to war at home. Most asylum seekers are single men who have lived in Russia for 10 years or more, and all reside in Moscow or the Moscow region.

There are 13,790 refugees registered with the UNHCR, the vast majority of them coming from the former Soviet Union. Of the 731 African refugees on the UNHCR's rolls, only six have been granted official status by the Federal Migration Service. Nineteen Africans hold temporary refugee status, while 469 are on a waiting list to apply. The rest, like Mandanoi, have been rejected.

Asylum seekers must prove they have been persecuted in their home country or are threatened with persecution should they return. Djamal Zamoum, director of the UNHCR's refugee reception center in Moscow, estimated that the migration service rejects about 96 percent of all asylum requests. The high rejection rate, he said, is due to a narrow definition of persecution. Also, many asylum seekers miss the application deadline -- within 24 hours of their arrival in Russia.

Most asylum seekers do not have documents proving that they are here legally. Many of those who do say that authorities often don't recognize them.

Bopembe Marcel Bomanda, from the Congo, has official refugee status. But he said that police have called his official migration service documents "toilet paper."

The UNHCR issues identification cards to asylum seekers, but the card carries no legal weight. The migration service gives documents to officially recognized refugees and applicants, but police and municipal authorities usually don't accept them, leaving refugees without access to registration or social services.

"I consider the lack of residence registration as the source of all problems," Zamoum said. "Because of this they cannot enjoy basic human rights. They cannot have access to work, access to education, access to anything, even though those rights are granted under Russian legislation."

Living in Fear

Last year, Samba Jean-Michel (he asked that his last name not be used) was on his way to the UNHCR office with other refugees when a gang of skinheads attacked them with sticks and knives. They ran to Zamoum for help, but one of their group tripped and fell. The skinheads pounced on him, beating him senseless. The man spent three days in a hospital before dying from his injuries.

"I walk down the street, it's the militsia, it's the hooligans, the militsia, the hooligans," Samba Jean-Michel said, his hands shaking. "They ask me for my documents and they say, 'That's not a document, that's a paper.'"

Pedro Lutandila of Angola moved to a refugee accommodation center in the Moscow region because he didn't want anyone to harm his four children, he said. Bomanda, Lutandila's neighbor, said it is the only place he feels safe.

"Here I can sleep with my eyes closed," he said. "I don't have to be afraid. No one touches me." All of the refugees interviewed said they are afraid to venture out on the street because of harassment by the police and the threat of violence by skinhead groups. These claims are documented by the UNHCR and other human rights organizations.

"You can't just walk freely. There are skinheads everywhere you go," said Taddele Gebre Alemayehu of Ethiopia. The Associated Press reported that the Interior Ministry estimates that there are about 5,000 skinheads in Moscow.

But skinheads are not the only group African refugees fear.

"Asylum seekers are often harassed and ill-treated by law enforcement officers who feel they can abuse such people with impunity," Amnesty International wrote in a March 2003 report on racial discrimination in Russia.

In 2001, Alemayehu was stopped and beaten by the police as he exited the Textilshchiki metro station. At the police station, several officers beat him again, he said, and sprayed tear gas in his eyes.

"The problem [of violence] is big for sure, but even worse is police harassment," Zamoum said. "People get stopped wherever they go."

When African refugees are attacked, few file a complaint with the police because they believe that the police will not help. Their concern was echoed in a 2002 Human Rights Watch report: "Most victims feared to report such attacks to the police; those that did generally found the police unwilling to investigate."

The Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy and the Moscow Catholic Chaplaincy heard so many stories of violence against Africans in their congregations that they established a joint task force in 2001 to document incidents of racial harassment and violence. They concluded that there was roughly one incident per week, with the rate increasing during the soccer season.

Mike Solovyanov / MT

The Reverend John Calhoun


"Those are just the people who come to us," said the Reverend John Calhoun of the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy. "We don't go out looking for them."

Father Michael Ryan of the Moscow Catholic Chaplaincy said he and Calhoun formed the task force because police denied any racial motivation behind the attacks.

"I think there's a lack of interest on the side of the police," Ryan said. "I don't think the police are particularly hostile. I've heard as many stories of the police being sympathetic and helpful and taking people to the hospital."

Mandanoi said that when he is beaten, his attackers sometimes call him a monkey or ask why he is in Russia. "When they beat me I just ask, 'Why? All human beings are the same. God doesn't care that we are black.'"

'It's Very Hard to Eat'

Mandanoi studied economics in the Congo, but here he can rarely find work, usually on a construction site, and never on a permanent job.

African refugees often cannot work because they do not have the proper documents or prospective employers won't accept them, Zamoum said. If they can find work, it is almost exclusively menial employment such as unloading produce or working on construction sites for a pittance, and in some cases they aren't paid at all.

"Under Russian law, refugees have the right to work," Calhoun said. "But most refugees who seek asylum in Moscow have their claims for refugee status denied, and thus have no right to official employment. So they take the occasional odd job here and there, and depend on friends for support. It's pretty remarkable how they find ways to live."

Lutandila used to leave his children home alone to wash dishes at a restaurant to support his family. But police stopped him all the time, he said, and extorted the money he earned.

Equilibre Solidarity, one of the UNHCR's partner organizations, gives refugees job training and helps them find work. But they are often unsuccessful.

"For UN people, it's known that we can't work," Alemayehu said. "For them it's a headache, because refugees keep asking them how to live, how to eat."

UNHCR Moscow gives vulnerable asylum seekers -- about 1,000 in total -- a monthly stipend, but just scraping by is typical for refugees, especially Africans, Zamoum said.

As a single man, Bomanda receives a stipend of $70 per month, but he pays $50 per month to live in a room at the refugee accommodation center. "That's $20 -- 600 rubles. Enough for two weeks," he said.

African refugees rely on the UNHCR and places like the Moscow Protestant Chaplaincy for basic necessities, legal support, help adapting to life in Russia and payment of their medical bills when they are attacked and need treatment.

The Moscow Catholic Chaplaincy provides a different kind of support: helping refugees go back home. In the last three years the parish has helped nearly 50 refugees return to Africa.

"Our first job is to discourage people from staying," Ryan said. "My advice to Africans is that Russia is not the place to seek refugee status."

Mike Solovyanov / MT

Taddele Gebre Alemayehu of Ethiopia


African refugees are grateful for what they get from the UNHCR and other organizations since they depend on the help, but some are upset that they still barely make ends meet.

Lutandila was bitter that while single refugees get $70 per month, he and his four children are given a monthly stipend of only $175.

"There are so many problems at Equilibre, UNHCR," Lutandila said. "And we stay silent."

"To live on $70 per month -- what's that?" asked Samba Jean-Michel. "It's very hard to eat."

Fleeing a Second Time

Mandanoi is currently waiting to hear if he has been accepted for resettlement in Canada. The UNHCR is trying to resettle African refugees in Russia to Western countries where conditions are safer and legal protection is more reliable.

Zamoum said that in general, all refugees should either adapt to their country of asylum or voluntarily return home. Moving to a third country is a last resort. But, he said, "certain categories of refugees have already exhausted all possibilities to adapt in Russia."

"It is Russia's responsibility to protect and provide for these refugees and until you try that, you can't begin to resettle," Zamoum said. "Africans are among the priority groups for resettlement due to problems with police harassment" and other factors. "But it's not automatic."

In 1999, the UNHCR appealed to the Russian government, asking it to take Africans' applications for refugee status on a priority basis. But all the Africans' refugee applications were rejected. After that, the UNHCR decided that "resettlement should be pursued more actively than before," Zamoum said.

Calhoun said African asylum seekers welcome the policy, though the resettlement process takes about a year and a half. "I think they all want to get out of Russia," he said. "I think the UN understands it is unsafe for people of color, and the Russian government is not accepting claims of asylum, so there's no legal protection."

Alemayehu was accepted by the United States in April for resettlement. He said that unlike many other refugees, he never tried to resettle until the UNHCR suggested it, trusting God to show him the way at the proper time. And he understood that the UNHCR faces a huge backlog of refugees wanting to get out.

"There are a lot of refugees who are waiting for this," he said. "Not only me. I will not think of the dark days that are coming, just the bright days."

Samba Jean-Michel said the United States also accepted him for resettlement in February. He is eagerly awaiting word on a departure date.

"Here human rights don't exist," he said. "Yesterday I was watching television when Putin was saying 'human rights.' But it's a farce. It's only words. We are nobody. Absolutely nobody."