HUMAN RIGHTS : Moscow Makes Life Tough on ‘Visitors’

Georgy Dzelishvili, a 30-year-old merchant from Georgia, came to Moscow with his wife two months ago to escape civil war in his country and set up an import business. Here they spend much of their time hiding from the police. “We are forced to run around like hunted rabbits,” he said.

It is a tense time for certain foreigners in this cosmopolitan city of 9 million people. In the shadow of an October clampdown on President Boris N. Yeltsin’s armed political foes, city authorities used a two-week state of emergency to expel from Moscow nearly 10,000 non-Russians arbitrarily tagged as undesirables.

With the emergency now over, Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov has issued a decree that aims, in the name of fighting gangsters and black marketeers, to discourage those ousted from coming back and to legalize the ongoing purge.

What is novel is a special “visitor” status for citizens of 11 neighboring former Soviet republics. These people are still free to travel to and within Russia without restrictions. But once inside Moscow, they must register with the police and, in most cases, pay a fee for each day they stay. Otherwise, they can be fined or run out of town.

Moscow and other cities still issue residency permits long used by Soviet bureaucrats to keep tabs on citizens. But the new decree makes Moscow the only world capital with its own municipal visa and fee for non-residents, according to the human rights organization Helsinki Watch.

It also appears to perpetuate a climate of fear among darker-skinned refugees and others from the Caucasus republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, who say they are targets of an “ethnic removal” campaign.

Sergei A. Kovalyov, chairman of Yeltsin’s human rights commission, has denounced the decree as “primeval.” He says it infringes on federal powers and could prompt neighboring countries to retaliate against Russians. But city officials call it a valid defense against an influx of immigrants.

“I don’t want to be called a Moscow chauvinist, but we have to know who is in this city and what they are doing,” said Alexander V. Zolin, who helped draft the decree and defended it in an interview. “We are not pursuing an ethnic angle.”

But he added that Caucasus people are “frequently engaged” in activities the city wants to stop--drug and weapons trafficking and certain kinds of merchandising. “These visitors often buy the entire stock of a Moscow shop and sell it at a Moscow market to Muscovites,” he explained. “That doesn’t expand competition. It just raises the cost of living.”

Since the Soviet Union broke up two years ago, people have come to Moscow from neighboring republics--fleeing turmoil, looking for better lives or just passing through. All are required to register now, Zolin said; only those with official refugee status, university students, invalids, people with immediate family in Moscow and those coming for special medical treatment are exempt from the daily fee, which equals 65 cents, or three times the minimum wage.

The decree took effect Monday. Over two days, police said, 1,130 visitors registered. Another 414 were arrested for failing to do so; of those, 273 were fined an average of $12 apiece.

Dzelishvili, the Georgian merchant, registered and paid but said police have repeatedly checked the flat he shares with a Russian family and stopped him on the street. “It’s humiliating, like South Africa,” he said. “We’re viewed as second-rate people. . . . And where can normal people find 21,000 rubles for a monthlong stay? Is this some kind of resort?”

The measure appears to be popular among Muscovites, many of whom stereotype the Caucasus people as swindlers. “If they go, the prices will drop immediately and people will be able to buy things again,” said Lyubov I. Yurkova, 63, selling onions outside Moscow’s Central Market.

Inside, the emigres from Azerbaijan who dominate the market’s fruit and vegetable stalls have come out of hiding since the October crackdown. But they worry that, the way things are going, the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States will break down and “Russians will keep to Russia and Azeris will keep to Azerbaijan,” as one of them said.

That would suit City Hall just fine.

Sergei Loiko and Alexei Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.