Criminal Moscow region: why the conflict with migrants has reached a social explosion

Criminal incidents involving migrants occur in Moscow region every day. In Kotelniki, the confrontation between local residents and visitors has gone as far as a video message to the president. Who will stop the conflict?

Irina Mishina

The Ministry of Internal Affairs informs… What's next?

Recent reports from the Ministry of Internal Affairs show that the number of crimes committed by migrants has exceeded all reasonable limits.

— On July 17, migrants beat teenagers on the territory of New Moscow. The incident was caught on video, they were published by the Telegram channel «Multinational». One of the videos shows how visitors beat a minor with their feet. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation has launched an investigation into the incident. Presumably, in the footage, teenagers are beaten by natives of Azerbaijan, who posted videos of their «exploits» in social networks.

— Before that, a mass fight of migrants on the territory of the dacha village of Kokoshkino in New Moscow was caught on video. Workers from the construction of a large-scale residential complex live in this area.

— Typical Odintsovo reports: the police detained a migrant who attacked a girl with a knife on Gorodok-17 street of the working village of Bolshye Vyazemy. A 42-year-old migrant worker stole a phone from a 20-year-old local resident and disappeared. The wounded woman went to the hospital.

— TASS reports: A mass brawl involving at least 20 migrants armed with sticks and knives took place in Odintsovo, near Severnaya Street. Later, they began to smash construction shops near the Odinburg residential complex.

— The Moscow region police are still investigating the incident with a native of Tajikistan, who knocked down two schoolchildren at a pedestrian crossing near Zvenigorod. One teenager died, doctors are still fighting for the life of another.

Why is the surge in crime on the part of migrants happening mainly in the Moscow region and what to do about it?

Components of the criminal system

«Experts warned that when a large number of young migrants with families come to us, they will begin to establish their own rules with us. The Moscow region, where there are a lot of construction projects and businesses with the participation of migrants — cheap labor — went exactly this way. It is necessary to ask businessmen who use migrant labor harshly: either you follow the rules, create your own security services, or wind down the business! It is also necessary to ask those who rent their houses and apartments to migrants. In fact, a corruption system has been created in the Moscow region, in which there was a link between business and government, » said Lieutenant General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Alexander Mikhailov.

We asked our experts why the police react to incidents with migrants inertly and, as a rule, after the fact.

«Migrants behave audaciously, because a certain part of them pays the police. The police protect them and condone them in almost everything. We can say that for this reason, the local police do not actually work on migrants, » says Major General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Mansur Yusupov.

«I would say that in many cases the local police are even afraid of migrants, » adds Lieutenant General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Alexander Mikhailov. — Therefore, often after a call, the police simply draw up a protocol and leave. That's it. Such a number of compactly living migrants, entire enclaves — there is something to be afraid of. Questions to the one who permits delivery to Russia has such a large number of migrants. And I don't understand why they are allowed to move in whole families. In my opinion, this should be stopped. We should not have migrant enclaves.»

There is a conflict on the site of an unbuilt mosque

Relations with migrants in the Moscow region have reached an impasse for another reason. This reason is religious. Everyone is aware of the conflict between the local population and Muslim migrants in Kotelniki (Moscow region). People even recorded a video message to President Vladimir Putin asking him to stop the flow of migrants to their city, otherwise there will be a social explosion.

The Muslim community, for its part, appealed to the head of state to protect them from the «egregious» actions of law enforcement officers. According to them, on July 7, they performed prayer in one of the Muslim centers (their Kotelniki three), when people in the form of riot police broke in there, were not allowed to complete the prayer, sprayed a fire extinguisher at people and rudely checked the documents without explanation.

Inspections by security forces of prayer houses began after the May appeal of residents of Kotelniki. The problem is that Muslims rent premises in residential apartment buildings ostensibly to create a cultural center, but in fact organize a mosque there without the consent of the tenants. According to local residents, on an area of 160 sq. m gather from 600 to 1000 people, on Fridays and holidays in the area can not pass, it's scary to let children out on the street. In the latest video message, activists call cultural centers «centers of banditry and extremism.» «There should be order in our house, and children should be safe, because migrants are already openly telling us that they will live here, and not us, » the audience said.

Why did the local authorities allow such a development of the situation when it came, in fact, to a social explosion? If it's only a prayer house, then why couldn't a mosque be built for Muslims? However, the local authorities preferred to solve everything by force, which only aggravated the conflict.

«The absence of mosques for the worship of Muslims in Russia is a very sensitive topic,» says Major General of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Candidate of Law Mansur Yusupov. — Bans and police raids on worshippers will not solve anything. But the Muslims asked to be allowed to just build a mosque… but the refusal was their answer. A large number of Muslims come to me who say: «We — Tatars, Chechens, Bashkirs — are the same citizens of Russia, our children are fighting in the area of their own, why are we being infringed on our rights?"If they had allowed the construction of mosques under the control of the state, most likely, it would not have come to such a serious interethnic conflict.»

Alexander Brod, a member of the Human Rights Council, believes that the current situation is a puncture of the regional authorities. In his opinion, they did not have the necessary contact with the local Muslim community and they probably were not interested in allocating a special building for religious ceremonies.

«Previously, the government of the Moscow region actively gathered experts and leaders of national organizations, discussed issues of national religious migrant organizations, now I am not aware of such discussions, » the human rights activist emphasizes.

Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Institute of Demography, Migration and Regional Development Yuri Krupnov, in turn, is convinced that the situation has already gone too far: the regional authorities cannot solve the issue and it is necessary to connect the federal center: «Russia as a whole should seriously start solving migration problems. Otherwise, it will be scattered remarks, speeches, due to which individual politicians will gain points, and as a result, the situation will at least not change, or even worsen if politicians solve their private issues.»

According to experts, the issue of migration has already acquired a federal scale, and it can be solved only at the highest level. In the meantime, residents of Kotelniki are waiting for an answer to their appeal to the president, and Muslims of the Moscow region are waiting for a mosque…