DUSHANBE, November 17, 2011, Asia-Plus -- 57 Tajik labor migrants were deported from Russia from November 11 to November 16, Safarbek Tohirov, the deputy head of the migration control department of Tajikistan’s Migration Service, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.

According to him, 14 of them were deported for violation of the regime of stay of foreign citizen sin Russia (most of the Tajik nationals are punished for failing to register within three days of the arrival in Russia), while the remaining 43 our fellow-countrymen were immediately deported upon arrival at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport.

Over the first ten months (January-October) of this year, 46 Tajik national have been deported from Russia.  Over the same period of last year, 306 Tajiks were deported from the Russian Federation.

According to the data from Tajikistan’s Migration Service, 1,032,620 Tajiks are currently in the Russian Federation.

Meanwhile, an article by Farangis Najibullah entitled “Tajiks Caught in Russian Crossfire over Pilot Jailings” that was posted on Radio Liberty’s website on November 16 notes that Tajik national Zulfiya Bobojonova and her two teenage sons haven''t left their rented Moscow apartment for nearly a week.

“There are rumors about Russian police detaining Tajiks in the streets and deporting them back to Tajikistan,” says the shopkeeper, who hails from a small city in northern Tajikistan but has worked legally in the Russian capital for the past nine years.  “Russian television channels talk about Tajik-migrant issues every night, and it''s just adding to our fears.”

In fact, the reports of migrant sweeps in Russia targeting Tajik nationals are more than rumors, the article says, noting that in the week since a Tajik court sentenced a Russian and an Estonian pilot to prison sentences for their unauthorized refueling stops en route from Kabul, Russian officials have rounded up hundreds of Tajik immigrants for possible expulsion.

“Tajiks don''t dare go outside or freely walk in streets right now,” Bobojonova tells RFE/RL. "Everybody is in hiding inside their homes. I didn''t even allow my 13-year-old son to go to school.  What if the police detain him, find us too, and deport all of us?  People are afraid.  Nobody''s going to work.”

Hundreds of Tajiks have been arrested in Moscow alone, at least 12 have been deported, and many others are awaiting rulings on their possible deportation.  Russia''s chief sanitary inspector, Gennady Onishchenko, has suggested that a full ban on Tajik migrants should be considered because many have been diagnosed with HIV or tuberculosis.

“I work here legally, I have a work and residency permit,” says Usmon Numonov, a Tajik construction engineer in St. Petersburg.  “But none of this matters for Russian police now; they are targeting Tajiks regardless of their papers.”  Numonov, too, is too frightened to leave home.  He says that even if police find your documents are in order, “they extort any money you have and then let you go.”  He calls the treatment “humiliating.”