DUSHANBE, July 27, 2010, Asia-Plus — More than one hundred people seeking Russian citizenship gathered near the Russian Embassy in Dushanbe Tuesday afternoon, at about 3:00 pm. They tried to draw attention of the embassy administration to improper work of the embassy’s consular section.
Those gathered told journalists that they were discontented about bad treatment by the consular section officers of visitors. They demanded proper attention to observance of order on completion of citizenship application.
“Anybody wanting to get citizenship may fill in the form,” said Ms. Dilya Shomahamdova, an activist of the initiative group of demonstrators, “However, the consular section does not accept our applications saying that allegedly only the section officers must fill in them. Meanwhile, they receive only not more than two or three visitors per day. We demand that they receive at least 10 visitors per day, because more than 400 people are on the waiting list for citizenship.”
Besides, to receive visitors it is necessary to use the list prepared by the initiative group in March this year already, she noted. “Since they have failed to prepare such a list, we have forced to do this for them,” Shomahmadova said.
One of those gathered noted, “We take vacation in order to solve this issue, but we cannot get an appointment. “It happens that the consular section officer engaged in filling in the forms “is sick” for seven or ten days and there is nobody to accept us. Therefore, we have to wait until another vacation,” he said.
Later on, two officers from the consular section came out to meet with the demonstrators and said the consul could accept only five of them. The officers also asked journalists to go away in rough manner.
The embassy guards began to disperse the demonstrators and people with cameras and dictaphones.
The meeting lasted about 45 minutes and the demonstrators then disbursed.
