MOSCOW — The imprisonment of a Russian citizen in Tajikistan has touched off reprisals against ethnic Tajik migrant workers in Russiawho say they have been unjustly targeted for arrest and deportation.
Immigration agents have rounded up at least 300 ethnic Tajiks in the last two weeks, according to the Federal Migration Service, though independent human rights workers said they believed that hundreds more might have been detained. Tajik officials said the first deportees began arriving home this week, though it was unclear how many would ultimately be expelled.
“Officers of the Federal Migration Service, together with agencies of the Interior Ministry, are conducting operations to expel citizens of Tajikistan, and we will do so rapidly,” Konstantin Romodanovsky, the head of the Federal Migration Service, told the Itar-Tass news agency last week. “We have been told to restore order, and we will employ the severest measures to do so.”
-Via NY Times- With a Russian in a Tajik Jail, Moscow Aims Its Reprisal at Migrant Workers