AN OPEN LETTER OF "MOSCOW ORGANIZATION OF OUTLAWS"
MOSCOW ILLEGALS / HUMAN RIGHTS IN
MOSCOW
ADDRESSED TO EVERYBODY
The outlaws of Moscow address to you. We are about three million in Moscow and we have no intention to keep silence any longer. We are the people who on various accounts have to live in Moscow without registration; we are the people who are deprived of the human rights. We are people of various age, sex, parentage and nationality. There are people among us with Doctor degrees and unqualified workers, painters and poets, programmers and managers, businessmen and kiosk venders - prostitutes and bandits, you add. Yes, there are such people. Now we leave them alone because they are the people who get the registration in the first place and do not need our help. We have nothing in common with them and they are our enemies as well as yours. Believe us, they are too great in number even among Muscovites. There are no people among us who have come to Moscow to rob and kill. We are ordinary honest people. We are the same as you are. We want to live an honest life and we want to work where we like, we want to love and to enjoy the life, we want to raise children and to hope for the better future. The only thing that unites us and differs from Muscovites is the absence of the stamp in our passports. We have come to Moscow on various reasons. Someone has got a job according to qualification, someone tries to earn honest money to feed the family left in a looted and poverty-stricken province, someone has no other place to go to and someone else wants to be closer to the theaters and noisy streets of Moscow. One cannot blame these people for these wants. It is their own business and their choice.
We are the guests but we make a substantial contribution to Moscow economy. We are the most active part of the population in the economic sense. We work at the city construction sites, we agree to non-prestigious and low-paid jobs, meet the city demand in highly qualified personnel, set up new businesses and provide additional jobs for Muscovites, pay taxes and spend our honest money in Moscow. We have to rent apartments in Moscow for higher prices. Mostly elderly Muscovites with spare room to live rent it and get quite a good increase to their pensions that makes their lives comfortable in these hard times. We have to shoulder the burden of maintaining Moscow militia. We spend all our energy and health for the good of the city where we live and work. We have greatly contributed to Moscow phenomenon. And what do we get in return?
We experience severe discrimination in getting jobs and are often underpaid for the same duties with Muscovites. We are hunted after at terminal buildings, market places and in the subway. We are extorted bribes; we are beaten at local police stations and at special deportation establishments. Muscovites hate us because they think we are to be blamed for all their woes. Moscow bandits torture us because they know Moscow authorities proclaimed us out law and we shall not go to the police. We are deprived of the vote in Moscow. Moscow authorities refuse to register our marriages. We are deprived of the right for free medical care despite the fact that we pay taxes properly. Our pregnant women cannot count on the necessary medical help and admittance to lying-in hospitals in Moscow. We cannot get proper nutrition and medical care for our children that are so necessary for them. They are not admitted to Moscow schools and pre-school institutions. We are not on the list of alive. We do not exist. But we do exist!
We have to hide our faces to avoid persecution. We have grounds for fear. Our organization exists still in Internet, the state without borders and registration, where a human being is respected only for being a Human. If you want to get in touch with us write to the following address:
Our web-site address: www.nelegal.net
We will be glad to receive your wishes and help. At this moment we really need your help. We need support of politicians, mass media, lawyers, legal experts and renowned people and of everybody. It is a pity but now we have to resist arbitrariness by ourselves.
We are ready to go to the streets of Moscow with peace provided the authorities guaranty our safety from Moscow militia arbitrariness. Let Muscovites see us, let them decide for themselves on their attitude to us, the outlaws.
We address to you, dear Muscovites, we appeal to your common sense. We wonder whether happiness of one man can be built on the woes of the other. You may find it difficult to understand those without registration stamp. Why do not you go and register yourselves, you say. Many reasons account for it. First, this requirement is just unlawful. Now we are not in the position to discuss legal aspect of Moscow administration instructions. It has already been done without us. A lot of us refuse to register out of principle as the registration encroaches on personal rights and is the survival of feudalism. Some people cannot or do not have enough time to gather all necessary documentation. The very process of getting the registration mark is unjustifiably humiliating. The officials responsible for registering extort bribes shamelessly as it is in their power to refuse and to permit. There is the whole industry flourishing in Moscow, the industry that helps provide fake registration marks. Who needs all these things? What are the purposes of this action of Moscow authorities? What is the purpose of instigating international dissension? Who profits from corrupted law-enforcement institution, from ungrounded hostilities between Muscovites and newcomers, from senseless bitterness of the outlaws? What it will result in the near future? We do not have answers to these questions. Try to answer them by yourselves. But do not forget that the politicians come and go and we shall live and work together.
The registration has crippled lives and fates of millions of Soviet people. Several generations grew up with an aim to get the longed-for Moscow registration stamp. Muscovites know it better than we do. What do we arrive at? At malice and mutual hatred? Once proud and stately, Moscow has turned into a laughing-stock for the international community, into a breeding-ground for brigandage and corruption. Terrorists raise their heads. We just have to restore civil accord in Moscow.
Cancellation of the registration institution in its current state is a true step to it, a step into the XXI century. If Moscow authorities are so much eager to spot a visitor, let them print questionnaires and distribute them among post offices and we fill them out and send to the address indicated. We hope it will do for everybody. We appeal to all the Russians to join us in this initiative. It is in our mutual interest to turn Moscow, so frightened, filled with senseless hatred and fear, into the city of freedom and happiness. There is enough room for everybody.
Other regions followed the suit. When registration in Moscow is cancelled, it will be cancelled in the provinces as well. We shall be able to live quite a happy life without the slavish registration as people in the rest of the world do. This is a senseless institution.
We believe that the ancient traditions of cordiality and hospitality will be revived in Moscow.
We ask you to help familiarize with the letter as many people as possible.
Mail to: info@nelegal.net
Our web-site: www.nelegal.net