TAJIKISTAN: Plight of elderly ethnic Russians in north

KHUJAND, 8 December 2004 (IRIN) - Galina Akhmerova is one of thousands of elderly ethnic Russians living in northern Tajikistan. She has had a hard time since both her husband and son died in early 1990s. "I have experienced a bitter and terrible life [since that],” she told IRIN at the regional centre catering for the disabled and vulnerable elderly in Khujand, capital of the northern Sogd province. There are about 40 people at the centre, Mukarrama Negmatova, head of the centre, told IRIN. "They have come from all parts of Tajikistan and they are representatives of other ethnic groups, who came to this country," she said. According to the regional unit of the Tajik Red Crescent Society (TRCS), there were 6,320 elderly people living alone in Sogd province at the beginning of the year. "The overwhelming majority of them are Russian-speaking people," Karim Sanginov, head of TRCS' regional unit, told IRIN. Local observers say that following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent civil war that ravaged Tajikistan between 1992 and 1997, thousands of ethnic Russian, mainly young and qualified people, fled the country. The elderly who couldn't leave remained. Deprived of the family-support network that most of the ethnic Tajiks enjoy, many Russian-speaking elderly end up living alone and some are homeless. “When I pass through the Panjshanbe area, I am overcome with sadness,” Father Oleg, a priest at the local Orthodox church in Khujand, told IRIN. "There are so many stranded people on the streets." In some cases, when they die nobody comes to take the deceased and give them a decent burial. "There are many cases and some homeless people pass away on the streets," Father Oleg maintained. According to the funeral bureau in Khujand, dozens of elderly ethnic Russians, who don't have any family or relatives or are homeless, die in Khujand every year. This makes the organisation of funerals often fraught with financial problems and unwanted corpses remain in morgues for weeks. "Deceased people are brought from the city mortuary,” Bakhrom Ikromov, an inspector of the funeral bureau of Khujand city, told IRIN. “Unfortunately, we do not have sufficient means for a decent burial. For all the burial process, 30 [Tajik] somonis are allocated, which is approximately US $10." That money is only enough for transportation of the deceased to the cemetery. While in a Muslim burial the body is wrapped in a sheet, funerals of non-Muslims are more complicated as coffins are needed for them. The minimum price of a simple coffin made of used wooden boards is roughly $25, which is more than an average monthly salary in the former Soviet republic. Ikromov said that the deceased brought to the mortuary were often unrecognisable and indescribable. The bodies remain in a morgue for weeks and often they start decaying due to absence of refrigerators, he added. “In such cases, we have to transport them immediately to respective cemeteries to lay them to rest,” he said. “We wrap them either in plastic bags or a blanket." In 2003, out of 30 homeless buried by the Khujand funeral bureau, 24 were from the Russian-speaking ethnic groups. In the first eight months of the year, that number has already reached 20, officials said. "These elderly people deserve a more honourable burial but we simply don't have resources for that," Ozodkhoja Bobokhojaev, head of the funeral bureau, said.