A Kurdish family with Iraqi and Syrian citizenships are in their 50th day of living in a Moscow airport as lawyers and immigration officials untangle their asylum request.
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But someone sold them fake visas, so Russian Federation won’t let them in.
Though Gulistan has been permitted to leave the airport to receive treatment at a nearby hospital, the rest of the family has been forced to make do with a former smoking lounge converted to a temporary living space.
“This is for transit for one hour, for two hours”, the eldest son, Rinas, told BBC. “And what it will be, we don’t know”.
The family posted a sign asking travelers not to touch their sparse belongings.
According to reports, authorities have since confirmed the authenticity of their travel documents, but Russian migration officials are still denying the family refugee status, their last ruling heard on 14 October.
He told the UPI news agency that Russia’s close ties with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad may be delaying them.
Russian Federation accepted 8,000 Syrian refugees in September, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, noting Russian Federation, unlike a few European countries, has not changed its immigration laws to accommodate the flood of people from the Middle East seeking asylum.
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In an interview with Russian news service Meduza, the father of the family, Khasan said: “Despite all that’s happened to us here, I don’t want to return home”.
