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Delegates want to deprive Russian women who marry foreigners of their Russian citizenship


On Monday, delegates of the LDPR (The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) faction announced a new legislative initiative. They suggested depriving Russians who marry foreigners of their citizenship and expelling them from the country. In the opinion of some experts, this is �pure publicity� and does not need to be discussed further. However, the �Novye Izvestiya� clarified that the LDPR initiative is a message from nationalist organizations that has already created groups of patriotic volunteers who are ready to fight �foreign expansion�.

On Monday, the leader of the LDPR and vice speaker of the State Duma Vladimir Zhirinovskyi spoke at the round table �Patriotism and civic duty� and reported that within the faction they work on a legislative project about a prohibition of marriages with foreigners. The given initiative was elaborated by the delegate Nikolai Kur�yanovich. According to his words, the aim of the initiative is to improve �the difficult demographic situation in this country�. � Our women, the most beautiful and the best in the world, leave Russia and thus squander the most precious thing that we have � the gene pool of our people,� lamented the elected representative of the people the night before. The delegate is convinced that Russian women who marry foreigners are not motivated by �elements of love�, but by financial interests. �If such a marriage took place, the Russian woman, who has been deprived of her citizenship of the Russian Federation, should be forced to move to her husband�s residence � the law should set a deadline for her leaving�, the delegate suggests.

Mister Kur�yanovich is supported by his colleague from the LDPR faction, the delegate Aleksei Ostrovskiy. �I think it is not necessary to pay that much more attention to personal interests of one citizen or another�, he told the �Novye Izvestiya�. �You have to think about what will happen to these citizens in the near future. Of course, the fate of every person is supreme, and individual interests are, from a civilized point of view, to be evaluated higher than the interests of the state. On the other hand, if we now don�t prevent the further development of the demographic crisis, then in 50 or 100 years a bunch of Chinese and other Asians will rule this country, and Russians will have become mere servants on the territory of their historic native land.� In his opinion, it is necessary to prohibit marriages with foreigners mainly because �our women move to other countries�. �And even if they stay here, it is mainly the marriages with citizens of Asian ethnic background that produce children who have no connection to the Russian nation.�

Let us remember that the initiative of the LDPR delegates virtually repeats the practice that existed in the USSR. The Soviet power always painfully reacted towards attempts of its citizens to start a family with citizens of other countries. Of course, this originated not from ethnic, but from political reasons. Yet in 1947 Joseph Stalin officially prohibited Soviet citizens to marry foreigners by special ukase of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. This ukase was only repealed in 1958 by the government of Nikita Khrushchev. However, obstacles for marriages with foreigners still existed for many years. For example: Only in 1975 did the USSR join the international treaty that obliges member states to grant spouses of different countries residence in either of these countries.

The executive director of the movement �For human rights� Lev Ponomarev thinks that if such a legislative project succeeded, it would represent an immediate step in the direction of the Stalin regime. �Of course, we go back to Soviet times, but with huge steps like this!� explains the human rights activist the �Novye Izvestiya�. �Under the Putin regime this is possible, just not now, but in five or six years. So the LDPR suggestion is premature�. At the same time Mr Ponomarev is convinced that �even the conditional parliament that we have at the moment will block this project.�

In order to deprive Russians who marry foreigners of their citizenship of the Russian Federation the LDPR delegates have to push some changes to the Russian constitution through the State Duma. After all, article 6 of the constitutional law says that �a citizen of the Russian Federation cannot be deprived of his citizenship or his right to change it�. Even the authors of the new law themselves admit, though, that they do not expect the State Duma to accept their legislative project. �I understand that the present staff of the State Duma, that is politically impotent - and I�m sure this is directly linked to physical impotence -, will not accept such a law�, delegate Kur�yanovich said yesterday. Besides, the underlying sexist motive of this legislative project can be tracked quite easily. Otherwise why do the authors of the project mainly condemn women who marry foreigners, but forget that Russian men also sometimes marry women from other countries?

According to Lev Ponomarev, the LDPR initiative is an �ordinary stupid publicity measure�. State Duma delegate Gennadiy Seleznev, who as the parliament speaker had to reap the fruits of LDPR�s lawmaking for many years, agrees with the human rights activist. �We have this unusual faction called LDPR, with unusual delegates who for some time have simply cluttered up the State Duma�s portfolio with all kinds of initiatives�, the delegate explained to the �Novye Izvestiya�. �Today they are very engaged in publicity, their leader hardly leaves the TV screens. They are well supported by the president�s administration and therefore feel free to act impertinently.� Gennadi Seleznev describes us what usually happens to these documents: �The legal administration has to read this through and give substantiation that it is a violation of the Russian Constitution and of the Russian family code. That means that the experts who could instead deal with a lot more serious legislative projects are forced to write a conclusion. Then the law is handed to a committee. There the experts will also at first sit together and have a laugh, but then must write a serious judgment in the name of the committee that this law has no chance at all.�

Also, the �Novye Izvetsiya� clarified that �stupid publicity� like this is actually not that harmless. The �Movement against Illegal Immigration�(DPNI), which exists in Russia since 2002, aims to �fight foreign expansion� by immigrants. �Migrants from the Caucasus states and from Central and South-Eastern Asia are the first pat of the foreign expansion� states a DPNI leaflet. In particular the movement recruits �voluntary groups of citizens to accomplish the task of fighting illegal immigration�. The organization�s homepage appeals to their brothers-in-arms, by saying: �All subdivisions of the DPNI � soon have to start organized events based on information about military ranks, operation skills, the possession of weapons, military sports training and motor transport. It is necessary to spread and to take over the instructions about the manner of acquiring and storing legal weapons.� The DPNI activities are even supported by the State Duma. As the DPNI coordinator of public relations Alexander Belov told us, the organisation �actively cooperates with delegate Kur�yanovich and others regarding the problem of illegal immigration.� �At the moment in Russia we don�t have enough healthy women who can give birth to normal children and prevent the depopulation of Russia�, Belov explains his position. �Delegate Kur�yanovich first made his initiative public in Irkutsk, and not without reason as they have an acute problem with Chinese immigrants.� One can imagine how voluntary groups of patriotic citizens will fight foreign expansion with legal weapons in their hands. In his appeal as a delegate on April 27th 2005 Nikolai Kur�yanovich called the members of the movement �colleagues� and supported their initiative to form voluntary troops. By the way, the delegate himself is one of the most ardent promoters of the right to bear arms in Russia. �If foreign forces occupy Russia or mass riots start, provoked by the enemies of our homeland, then real patriots should be ready to defend their home!�, declares delegate Kur�yanovich.

[09.06.2005]

Source: The Newspaper �Novye Izvestiya�

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