13 September 2016

Source: HRO.org

Stateless persons are not eligible for free legal aid, there is no judicial review of the length of their stay in custody, and when they are eventually released they are denied a passport, meaning they are constantly at risk of being re-incarcerated.

An apatride (from the latin apatris and the ancient greek ἄπολις), also known as a stateless person, is an individual who is not considered a citizen or national of any state and who possesses no proof of his or her right to citizenship or nationality of any state.

Lawyers from the Memorial Human Rights Centre in Moscow have submitted a complaint to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe regarding Russia’s non-implementation of the ECtHR judgment in Kim v. Russia, Kommersant reports.

In 2014 the Strasbourg Court upheld the complaint of Roman Kim from Uzbekistan, who spent more than two years in a temporary detention centre for foreign citizens in St Petersburg in deplorable conditions.

Earlier a Russian court ruled that Kim should be deported, but his country would not take him back.

The ECtHR found, inter alia, that in Russia stateless persons are not eligible for free legal aid, that there is no judicial review of the length of their stay in custody, and when they are eventually released they are denied a passport, meaning they are constantly at risk of being re-incarcerated.

In its judgment the ECtHR stated that the Russian authorities must provide a legal mechanism that would allow immigrants to challenge in court the unlawfulness of their detention under improper conditions, to limit the length of their stay in custody and to prevent repeated arrests.

However, according to Memorial’s lawyers Olga Mikhailova and Kirill Koroteev, “no such general measures have been taken” and no reforms of the legislation have been made.

They also draw attention to the fact that the Russian Supreme Court rejects applicants who refer to the above judgment in proving the impossibility of their independently leaving the Russian Federation.

The Memorial Human Rights Centre has put forward a number of proposals, including reducing the length of detention before deportation to two months, and requiring immigration authorities to supply stateless persons with the documentation they need on release from custody since they cannot be deported.

The lawyers at Memorial Human Rights Centre argue that the Committee of MInisters should also request that the Russian authorities provide up-to-date information on conditions in temporary detention centres for foreigners and ensure that rights violations there are addressed and remedied.