Armenian, Georgian, Azerbaijani Residents Expelled Central Asian Workers from Russian City

Following a clash between Central Asian guest workers and ethnic Russian residents on Saturday night, residents of the Russian city of Kalyazin along the Volga River, some 150 kilometers from Moscow, assembled on Monday and demanded that all non-Russians leave town, something that appears to have occurred, leading to the suspension of construction work, writes Paul Goble on EurasiaReview.com. 

However, according to Russian news source News, local Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani residents were among those who demanded the expulsion of the foreign workers. The city’s authorities were forced to move the foreign workers by the busload as far away from the angered residents as possible. Residents accompanied the buses to the city limits.

According to both the local media and blogs, writes Goble, “the conflict began over a girl” when at a Kalyazin bar on Saturday night, “gastarbeiters attempted to rape a local resident,” prompting “local youths to come her defense” and leading the gastarbeiters to shout “Death to Russians!” That in turn led to the burning of gastarbeiter cars (www.rus-obr.ru/days/7663).

Several people were taken to the hospital, and the authorities both attempted to play down the clash as nothing more than “a drunken fight” and called in OMON units to try to restore order. But instead of calming the situation, these efforts had the opposite effect, leading to a large meeting in the city on Monday.

As of August 25, it appears that all the gastarbeiters have left the Kalyazin district. Their houses and apartments are empty, some of which have had their windows broken. Some of their animals are wandering about. And work at the construction sites where they had been employed has stopped.