I hope stories like this are penetrating outside of the English-language news sphere. They don’t do much good for us, but could save some people’s lives translated into Arabic and published on Al Jazeera.
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Awad and at least a dozen other inmates held in the pre-deportation centre in Petrozavodsk, Karelia’s capital, were approached by military representatives soon after their arrest and were offered “a job for the state”. They were promised good pay, medical care and permission to stay in Russia on completing a one-year army contract.
Tell me you didn’t read the article, without saying you didn’t read the article.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The practice of coercing people in pre-deportation detention centres to sign contracts for army service in Ukraine is not new, but the numbers swelled as foreign migrants arrived at Russia’s 1,340-km (833-mile) border with Finland.
Finland temporarily closed all eight of its Russian border crossings, accusing Moscow of channelling migrants and asylum seekers there as part of a destabilisation campaign after the government in Helsinki joined Nato earlier this year.
Analysis of court hearings in Karelia, one of three Russian regions bordering Finland, showed that in the past three weeks, 236 people were arrested for staying in Russia without valid visas, destined for deportation.
Awad told the BBC that he hired a taxi on 14 November and, along with another Somali migrant, was driven for several hours from St Petersburg to Lakhdenpokhya, a town in Karelia 30km from the Finnish border.
Separately, an Iraqi man who was also arrested close to Finland’s border told human rights activists that he too was being pressured to sign an army contract as a way to void the deportation order.
Awad said officials at the camp threatened them with long prison sentences for breaching military laws, but later retreated, saying that the job offers would be cancelled and deportation procedures would resume.
The original article contains 1,107 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 81%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
