Human rights council says Russia should accept Syrian Circassian refugees

Maxim Shevchenko

 The council plans to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to give green light to accepting the refugees

Russia’s presidential council for civil society and human rights suggests that Russia should take in refugees from the crisis-hit Syria, the Izvestia newspaper reported on Thursday.

"To accept the refugees, there is a need for political will," a council member Maxim Shevchenko, who has proposed the initiative, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
The council plans to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin to give green light to accepting the refugees, he said.

Russia may host some 5,000 or 10,000 Circassians, an ethnic group of North Caucasian origin who were displaced in the 19th century, he said. Some 80,000 Circassians currently live in Syria.

The refugees could return to their historic homeland in Russia’s Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria and the Krasnodar Territory, Shevchenko said.

"This people have a very high level of civilian and social responsibility," he said rejecting an earlier statement of the Russian Interior Ministry’s center for combating extremism that the move could pose a security threat.
First published by TASS:

The article in Russian language