On May 25, a regional court in Western Kazakhstan, having considered the appeal of Elista resident Igor Sandzhiev, who fled mobilization, decided to deport him back to Russia. The man is convinced that he will face a long sentence in his homeland for desertion, and intends to continue to seek refugee status in Kazakhstan.
46-year-old Kalmyk builder Igor Sandzhiev was mobilized without even receiving a summons. According to him, on September 23, 2022, an employee of the military registration and enlistment office called him and invited him to come for a “data check.” At the military registration and enlistment office, Sanjiev and other similar invitees were told that in the evening they would be taken to a military unit in the Volgograd region, so their relatives should bring them a change of clothes and bath accessories. They were not even allowed to leave the military registration and enlistment office to say goodbye to their families.
Already from the barracks, Sanjiev tried to apply for alternative civilian service - in connection with his religious beliefs: as a Buddhist, he cannot participate in hostilities. However, the application was not accepted and they threatened the military prosecutor’s office.
In November, Sanjiev escaped from the unit - he crawled under barbed wire and hitched a ride. He spent almost the entire winter in Moscow and St. Petersburg, then went to Minsk and began applying to the embassies of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to obtain a humanitarian visa. But he was soon detained by Belarusian state security officers. The security forces drew up an administrative protocol on “resistance to police officers,” and the court ordered 15 days of arrest.
After serving his sentence, Sanjiev bought a plane ticket; he was detained at Sheremetyevo and sent to Elista. At the police department, his passport was taken away and he was taken to a Volgograd military unit.
On March 25, the man escaped again, this time driving east. He crossed the Kazakh border on foot, then took a taxi to Uralsk, where he applied to the commission at the Department of Labor and Social Protection with an application for refugee status. However, he was refused due to illegal border crossing and lack of a passport.
The Bokeyordinsky District Court sentenced the failed refugee to six months of probation and ordered his expulsion from Kazakhstan. The appellate court upheld the verdict and gave the defendant a month to voluntarily leave the country. Meanwhile, Sanjiev has a brother living in Almaty who is ready to bear the costs of maintaining the refugee.
Local human rights activists called the decision illegal and sent a complaint to the Minister of Labor and Social Protection. Sandzhiev himself believes that the Kazakh authorities do not want to spoil relations with Russia and are afraid of queues of refugees if they make a decision in favor of Sandzhiev.
In June, he tried to challenge the refusal of local authorities to award him refugee status, but the court did not accept his claim because, due to the lack of a passport, he could not obtain a tax identification number and pay the state fee. Kazakh human rights activists consider his situation a violation of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Refugee Convention and intend to defend his rights “all the way to the Supreme Court and the Human Rights Committee.”