You're reading: Foreigners face detention despite arriving legally

When the Afghan family with valid passports and visas flew into Kyiv’s Boryspil airport on Sept. 6, they expected to be spending the next few days with their relatives in Odesa.

But it was another 72 hours before the two parents and their one-year-old child saw their relatives after Ukrainian border guards refused to admit them to the country, instead locking them in a small room without food or drinking water.

The story of this family, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals, is a common problem for many foreigners, who are denied entry despite having all the correct paperwork, human rights activists say.

Hundreds of travelers from Georgia, Uzbekistan, China, India, Egypt and other developing countries face similar problems in entering the country. The State Border Guard Service says it is acting lawfully.

The Afghan family had come to visit the wife’s parents and siblings, who are all longtime residents of Odesa and Ukrainian citizens.

But border guards, unable to establish the goal of their visit, held them in a small room in the transit zone. The only furniture there was iron chairs, and they were provided with no food, drinking water, translator or lawyer.

There’s a list of countries whose citizens have to show a certain sum of money on arrival … but the law doesn’t state what exactly counts as financial wellbeing – cash, money on a card, support from the person who provided the invitation, a return ticket.

– Galyna Bocheva, ‘Without Borders’

They “had Ukrainian visas until Nov. 15, as well as return tickets on Sept. 27. The lady’s father, who is a Ukrainian citizen and speaks excellent Russian, was waiting in the arrivals hall,” said Halyna Bocheva, a lawyer for rights group Without Borders, who was contacted for help by the father.

The wife said she used tap water to mix formula for the child, and that she became so ill that the border guards had to call an ambulance.

“They could not confirm the goal of their visit and didn’t have sufficient financial provisions for their stay in Ukraine,” said Oleksandr Melnikov, deputy head of the State Border Guard Service.

Sources at the Indian and Egyptian Embassies told the Kyiv Post that they are tired of rescuing their citizens from airports and that they frequently raise the issue with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

After three days the family was allowed to enter the country, after the Afghan Embassy “confirmed their financial provisions,” border guards said.
Rights defenders said they believe the real reason the case was resolved was the family’s appeal to the European Court of Human Rights and media attention.

Cases like this are far from rare. The State Border Guard Service calls such people “potential illegal immigrants” and boasts of statistics showing how many they stopped from entering the country.

“In the first half of 2011, we detained 456 potential illegal immigrants at the border. These are people who have visas but can’t explain the goal of their visit to Ukraine, for example by naming the places they want to see,” said Mariana Markovych, spokeswoman for Boryspil airport’s border guards.
“These are citizens of Georgia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, China and other countries,” she added.

International rights group Amnesty International said it was concerned that such cases are growing in number.

As a state party to the European Convention on Human Rights, Ukraine must guarantee the liberty and security of people on its territory. This means that people can only be detained in accordance with the law.

– Heather McGill, a European expert on Europe and Central Asia.

“There are very serious questions about why they were detained for three days in such poor conditions,” said Heather McGill, a European expert on Europe and Central Asia. “As a state party to the European Convention on Human Rights, Ukraine must guarantee the liberty and security of people on its territory. This means that people can only be detained in accordance with the law ‘for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence.’”

“I would want to ask the Ukrainian authorities what offence these people had committed, and on what basis they had been detained,” she added.
Melnikov from the State Border Guard Service said the airlines were responsible for the conditions of confinement.

Rights defenders dismissed this as nonsense. “Responsibility for the conditions of confinement lies on the state they arrived in,” said Bocheva from Without Borders. “Border guards are obliged to solve the issue either with the airline, or the airport, or with their management, but not to allow glaring violations of human rights.”

Georgian Georgy Kanashvili arrived in Kyiv on Aug. 11, and was also held for 24 hours in the transit zone without food, drinking water, or the possibility to buy a SIM card for his cell to call his friend who was waiting to meet him.

He said he was threatened with deportation.

Andriy Kucherov, a spokesman for the State Border Guard Service, said Kanashvili was released when the embassy of a European Union country confirmed he had a residence permit in that country.

Markovych, the Boryspil border guard spokeswoman, said his mistake had been to come to Kyiv for the first time without booking a hotel.
“I’ve traveled throughout Europe; my wife is an EU citizen, but I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere. They said I didn’t have enough proof that I was here as a tourist,” Kanashvili said.

Some foreigners accuse border guards of racial profiling.

“If you came through passport control with me at Boryspil, you would understand what I’m talking about,” said Mrindula Gosh from India, who has lived in Ukraine for more than 20 years.. “When they see someone with dark skin, they immediately attach a label and it’s completely unimportant that you have a visa and all your documents are in order.”

Amnesty International’s McGill said that Ukrainian border guards might be breaking international law because they are frightened that travelers from developing countries will stay in Ukraine and seek asylum.

Bocheva said imperfect legislation opens the path to violations. “There’s a list of countries whose citizens have to show a certain sum of money on arrival … but the law doesn’t state what exactly counts as financial wellbeing – cash, money on a card, support from the person who provided the invitation, a return ticket,” she said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]