Some 50 Chechens who fled ethnic violence in the northwestern industrial town of Kondopoga have begun to leave the summer camp near Petrozavodsk, the Karelian capital, where they have been living for three weeks.
Hamzat Magamadov, a representative of the group living at the Aino summer camp, said last Friday that the families were deciding whether to return to their homes in Kondopoga or to move elsewhere.
Magamadov denied reports Friday that the Chechens were being evicted from the two-story dormitory on Lake Lososinnoye, where they were put under police protection after ethnic Russians attacked and looted Kondopoga businesses, prompting most of the several hundred natives of the Caucasus living in the town to flee.
"We have met with local and regional officials and expressed our concerns. Now the families are deciding where they want to go," Magamadov said by telephone from the camp Friday.
"Some have already returned to Kondopoga, some want to go back to Chechnya and others want to move to Petrozavodsk or somewhere else in Karelia," he said.
The riots in Kondopoga, where tensions between ethnic Russians and traders from the Caucasus have simmered for years, were ignited by a fight at an Azeri-run restaurant that left two local Russians dead.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry's Karelia branch said by telephone from Petrozavodsk on Friday that the deadline for the Chechens to move out of the camp had been set for Sept. 11, but was subsequently moved back.
A majority of the Chechens at the camp told The Moscow Times that they had no intention of returning to Kondopoga to live, though many were trying to figure out what to do with the property they left behind. Several said they would seek political asylum in Finland in or one of the Scandinavian countries.
Source: The Moscow Times
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