Moscow: Migrant Homes To Be Raided Each Week
Moscow’s police chief has said the force will raid
illegal migrants’ apartments every Friday following an anti-migrant riot
earlier this month.
About 130,000 apartments in Moscow, which are leased illegally, will be scoured by the year's end, reports The Moscow Times.
The move is response to a violent riot in the capital last weekend where more than a thousand demonstrators gathered.
They were protesting over a murder blamed on a migrant from the north Caucasus, a region in southern Russia.
The initiative, which will last until the end of the year, has been criticised for encouraging "immigrant phobia" by the head of Russia’s top migrant body.
Muhammad Amin Madzhumder, head of the Russian Migrants Federation, told The Moscow Times: "Not only the police hold raids, but they take nationalists on them, which is a very dangerous trend."
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny also hit out at the scheme, announced by police head Anatoly Yakunin, saying it would breed corruption and allow illegal migrants to hide.
Defending the policy, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said: "Until we know who lives in our houses, until the major part of them are registered, there will always be serious problems with public order."
Growing nationalism among ethnic Russians combined with an influx of migrants from former Soviet republics has led to increased tensions between native Muscovites and newcomers.
Natives of the Caucasus, most of whom have dark complexions and are Muslim, often work in shopping centres and at vegetable markets in the Russian capital.
Some observers have accused the authorities of encouraging anti-migrant sentiment in an attempt to redirect popular discontent with government policies.