Requirements and Challenges of the Registration System

5.2.1 Requirements and Challenges of the Registration System

5.2.1.1 Required Documents to Get Registered in Osh

According to the information provided of a specialist of registration issues working in the passport office of Osh and of a deputy of the Advocacy Centre for Human Rights, following documents are required for the temporal and the permanent registration in Osh:

Temporal Registration

A temporal registration is required if someone stays in a place for more than 45 days in which the person should register within 5 days. A person can also register temporally if (s)he resides in a hotel. With the temporal registration in one place, the permanent registration which is written on the ID card stays in the previous place.

Required documents:  Application form  ID card

 Copy of the passport of the person where (s)he resides / Confirmation of the hotel where the person resides.  Certificate of the Domkom which proves that you live in the correspondent address

 20 Som payment recipe for the forms

Permanent Registration

According to the law the permanent registration should be in the place of permanent residence of a person. First the person has to deregister in his/her previous place of registration, and within 10 days (s)he should register in the new place of residence. If someone moves to Osh, (s)he should bring following documents:

 Deregistration form (has to be picked up in Osh, brought to the place of origin to deregister, and brought back to the passport office of Osh).

After somebody brought the deregistration form, he/she will receive three forms:  Statistical form (Form No.10)

 Address form (Form No.2)  Election form (Form No.6)

These forms have to be completed and brought back to the passport office. Additionally the applicant has to bring:

 20 Som payment recipe for the 3 forms  People with property: Domovaya Kniga and Form No.4 from Gos register / People who register at somebody else’s address: Form No.5, confirmed by Domkom Tenants: Either the houseowner has to come with the completed Form No.5 to the registration office, or else the tenant has to bring a notary confirmed tenancy agreement

 Men who are liable to military service: Change of military documents  Passport

In general, a person has to come to the office twice. First to pick up the forms for deregistration, second to register and fill all the forms. After a literature review the researcher found one additionally required document which wasn’t mentioned from the specialist: If someone was imprisoned in the past, (s)he is required to provide a certificate of release (Usmanov, 2011, p.16). All the other requirements mentioned from the expert could also be found in the literature.

Changing the Permanent Registration within Osh

If somebody already has his /her registration in Osh, but move to another house, the registration should be changed to the new address. For this, following documents are required:

 For Houseowners: Domovaya kniga from the former house or apartment and domovaya kniga from the new house or apartment.  For Tenants: Houseowner ’s agreement from the former and the new house or apartment: Letter from the houseowner to the boss of the passport office where he confirms the person lived or lives there  For men: Change of military documents  Purchase form No.10 from registration office and complete it

According to the Advocacy Centre for Human Rights, the procedure to get registered was just recently simplified for specific groups of people like students, employees with a working contract, homeless people and IDPs. However they emphasized that these changes were only made in the law so far, but the respective regul ations wouldn’t be adjusted yet, so none of the simplifications would be implemented yet.

As showed in this chapter, the number of required documents can go up until nine, whereas the forms don’t seem to be a problematic requirement if the other documents are available. Through the interviews with internal migrants the researcher tried to find out if they were asked for other documents, but they didn’t. Most of them only listed two or three documents like the passport, the domovaya kniga and sometimes the spravka of the Domkom.

5.2.1.2 Challenging Requirements

Most challenging documents mentioned in the interviews were the property documents. All of the interviewees agreed that if somebody is a tenant and doesn’t own property, there is no way to get registered in Osh, while it is very easy to get registered for people who own a property in Osh. The interviewees can be divided in two cases: In the first case, the internal migrant couldn’t obtain a registration because he is a tenant and do esn’t own property in Osh, in the second case the internal migrant owns a property but because of lacking property documents he can’t become registered in his property.

No Property in Osh

No Tenancy Agreement in General According to the law, somebody can’t only register in his own property, but also in an address of

another house owner as a tenant if there is a notary confirmed tenancy agreement with the house another house owner as a tenant if there is a notary confirmed tenancy agreement with the house

“but here for permanent [registration] even the law says one need to have to come with the agreement between the landlord and the tenant, but in reality it is not performable, so people tend not to have agreement because this is related to tax department and no one is doing this, and only the one way is to have a propiska is to have your own house.” (Representative of Advocacy Centre for Human Rights, Osh 2013)

Most interviewed migrants agreed in that point that without an own property in Osh there is no chance to get registered.

“No I do not know [which documents are needed to get propiska]. In order to deregister and register here I need a property, my own property. And I don’t have it,

so I can’t receive propiska. Currently we are renting lodgings.” (Aidana, Osh 2013) 2 The question arises now why it is that difficult for tenants go get a tenancy agreement. The agent

from the NGO already mentioned that the house owners have to pay additional taxes if they register a tenant. From a deputy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs the researcher learned that if the houseowners make everything officially with a tenancy agreement, they need a patent to be allowed to rent their house, and if they have this patent, they have to pay taxes. That’s an obvious reason why they prefer to rent their properties unofficially. But there are two other reasons mentioned in other literature and also heard in the interviews why house owners hesitate to allow their tenants to register in their house. One reason is the utility costs. They are calculated according to the amount of people registered in that address. The more people are registered, the higher are the utility costs, what would be a disadvantage for the houseowner. A second reason is the general mistrust from the house owners towards their tenants, which is a legacy of the USSR (Hatcher, 2011, p.12). In the USSR legislation, people who were registered in one place automatically had rights on the ownership of a property. Because of that, the house owners nowadays still fear that their tenants claim property if they allow them to register in that place. In that way, this property law is still reproduced through society as their practices depend on that law, even if it doesn’t exist anymore. The reproduction of this non-existing law again influence the registration system, as it contributes to the fact that most tenants don’t have a tenancy agreement and the refore aren’t able to register. The reproduction of a non-existing law can be explained by the effect of disciplinary power (Foucault, 1977). As Mitchell (1991) explains, through everyday practice of society, which is led by the discipline to follow the law due to the fear of punishment, the society reproduces itself. Since the former laws of the Soviet Union are still in the minds of society member, they reproduce this law and therefore adjust their practices pragmatically according to this law; specifically they don’t issue tenancy agreements as a consequence. Thus again a part of society, respectively the tenants without tenancy agreement – is reproduced, which doesn’t act according to the law and reside without any official agreement. The remaining influence

2 The original names were replaced through fictive Kyrgyz and Uzbek names in order to guarantee the anonymity of the interviews.

of the Soviet legislation shows that the fact that Kyrgyzstan was a part of the Soviet Union is important in order to understand contemporary state society legislation, what is in compliance with Luong’s (2004) statement that it is crucial to take into account the Soviet legacy for the analyse of contemporary state-society relations. Another point which supports this importance is the fact that all of the interviewed internal migrants still called the contemporary registration system Propiska, as it was called during the Soviet period.

Coming back to the challenging requirements, however, for a temporal registration, not even a tenancy agreement is required; the permission of the houseowner to register temporally under his address is already adequate. But even here there are some houseowners which fear to lose rights on their property:

“We heard from other people that one can make a temporary propiska if the owner of the house allows, but usually the owners are afraid of giving registration to a stranger

as they are afraid to lose their property. Who wants additional people to be registered in their property? Nobody wants.[…] For example I asked one lady whom I knew, a Uzbek lady who has her propiska, rather well to put me temporarily on propiska in her property until I get a plot of land in Osh, she refused to do that by telling that she is afraid of my intentions to cheating her and occupy her property” (Aksana, Osh 2013)

Tenants Living in Dormitories Many tenants live in a dormitory, some of them are private and others are state-owned. At the first

moment, it surprises that not even the state owned dormitories allow their tenants to register in their place, regarding that the prescription to register in the place of residency derives from the state. The inhabitants of the dormitory as well as an agent from an NGO explained that the dormitories supposed to be for students of the university, while other people aren’t allowed to live there:

“I went to passport office, as I lived in the dormitory of technical college I was said that I cannot be registered there as it belongs to the state, to the Ministry of

E ducation. And only students can live there. […] They said it’s from the state, and only students can live there. And people with families they don’t have rights to live there.” (Nargiza, Osh 2013)

This means that internal migrants living in these state-owned dormitories are kind of occupying them and live there illegally. Out of that reason, they don’t get a legal tenancy agreement and thus

aren’t able to register in those places. The state is answering to that situation by privatizing some of the dormitories which are only inhabited by internal migrants. If the inhabitants by themselves become the owners, they’ll be able to register and the dormitory room becomes to their official place of residency. However as already explained above, sometimes the inhabitants become to tenants as the privatized dormitory will be allocated to owners who give the rooms for rent. In that case, the dormitory as a place for residency became legalized, but again due to the lack of tenancy agreements, the status of inhabitants which live there as tenants remain unofficial as they still aren’t able to register. It means that the legalization of the dormitories through privatization alone isn’t enough to enable the inhabitants to register in such places.

In general after the interviews, the researcher had the impression that being a tenant is not really well-respected in Osh. If someone is in a good condition and want to stay somewhere permanently,

he owns a property. To be a tenant seems to be only legitimate for temporary residents and for younger people. This attitude is expressed in the following quote:

“I took this one and my application and I applied in the majors office for the plot of land, as a place to construct, because I’m old enough and I should have a place and not be a tenant, in such an age.” (Nargiza, Osh 2013)

This attitude might be reproduced through state practices. This example shows that power isn’t only emerging through rules set up by state and applied on society, moreover power emerges through certain practices of both state and society (Migdal, 2001; Mitchell, 1991): It is not the law which says that tenants can’t register, but the requirements for getting registered set up by the local self-government bodies together with the practices of the house owners reproduce the fact that they can’t register. It even becomes general known that if somebody is a tenant, (s)he can’t register. People talk about it as it would be the law

that as a tenant you can’t register, and through this implicitness, the fact that tenants can’t register again becomes reproduced. This reproduction is connected with the situation like already discussed above, where a former law of the Soviet Union on property claim was still reproduced, even if it isn’t existing anymore (compare 5.2.1.2). Through the reproduction of this law, houseowners don’t give tenancy agreements and tenants can’t register. In this chapter it becomes clear that the reproduction of this law has further implications: The status of tenants as a part of society which can’t register and therefore can’t live formally in its place of residence isn’t founded on a respective law, but is reproduced through the practices of state and of society which make it impossible for tenants do register. These practices become as powerful as a law set up by state.

As a consequence, tenants reside in Osh as irregular migrants as they aren’t able to register. Thus, tenants are distinct from other citizens which enjoy a legal residence status. Finally it can be said that state practices don’t take into account that many people live as tenants in Osh. They are illegalized, and in statistics they don’t exist, therefore they are neither included in town-planning. Instead of adjust the practices according to the realities of internal migration, those internal migrants which are tenants are excluded from state practices and are made invisible.

Challenging Property Documents

The researcher encountered several internal migrants living in Osh in their own property which nevertheless have no registration in Osh. One reason for that can be that they don’t have the necessary documents for their property which are required to get registered. The required ownership document is called domovaya kniga (see photo 12). House owners get it if they register their property in the Gos register.

Photo 12: Example of a domovaya kniga (property document)

(Source: own photo) Some interviewed house owners didn’t have this domovaya kniga. There were two reasons for it:

One reason for the absent of it is the fact that ownership as it exists today didn’t exist in Soviet Union 3 . So, in many cases, if somebody purchased a house, (s)

he didn’t receive all of the documents necessary for the property registration.

“When we purchased it, the seller didn’t have proper documents, because the house belonged to his father. So we also didn’t had the documents which proved our property and th e house wasn’t registered.”(Aziza, Osh 2013)

The other reason for missing property documents lies more in the guilty of the houseowners: They don’t have property documents because they don’t go and register their property in the Gos

register . If they don’t register there, they don’t get a domovaya kniga. The researcher came across this situation in a privatized dormitory: The inhabitants explained that most of the rooms in the dormitory are private owned, but still most of the owners aren’t registered in that dormitory because they didn’t register their ownership in the Gos register and thus couldn’t register themselves under the address of the dormitory. They first have to register their property to be able to register themselves.

“Most people here have no domovaya kniga, because they do not register their ownership in Gos register .[…] Out of 120 families, just 2р families have propiska, have not they?” (Chinara, Osh 2013)

The answer on the question why some people fail to register their ownership was that it would be too expensive to register, and also too time consuming. These answers can be approved by literature according to which the registration of someone’s property can be rather complicated and time consuming (UNECE, 2010, p.33).

One special case encountered to the researcher was the situation of the inhabitants of a former datcha settlement (compare 5.1.2.1) . As the houses in that settlement aren’t intended for living there, the inhabitants need to get documents which allow them to live there. One third of the

3 This information was given orally in an interview with Ferghana Valley Lawyers without Borders.

residents in that settlement managed to get registered, while the others live there without registration. According to the Advocacy Centre, it is not possible in a legal way to receive the property documents for that area. Owners of these houses possess a membership book for the settlement, but in conformity with the law it’s forbidden to permanently live in these houses as the land is rated as land for agricultural use. Thus the residents actually live there illegally. Those ones who managed to get property documents for their house could only do that through bribing. This is very expensive and time- consuming; so many people of that settlement don’t have property documents and thus no registration in their address. The inhabitants of the datcha settlement are illegalized, similar to the inhabitants of the dormitories. The state doesn’t officially allow people to live in that place as it doesn’t classifies the area as a place of permanent residence, even if it’s obvious that people still live there.

Other Challenging Documents

Another challenge to get registered related to documents is the fact that with changing your registration someone needs a new ID card, as the registration is written on it. This is costly and time-consuming, what prevents people from doing it. Internal migrants rather wait until their ID card is expired anyway. In some other cases, the reason why they failed to get registered are some military documents, as men who are in military have to collect plenty of documents for getting registered

5.2.1.3 How State Reproduce Society and the Registration System through Challenging Requirements

As illustrated above, the registration system in Osh is characterized by high requirements for internal migrants to register. These set and implemented requirements can be analysed as practices of the state in the context of the registration system. Those state practices make it difficult for internal migrants to migrate formally correctly. Even if they want to act according to the law, they can’t do so if they don’t fulfil the requirements. Thus they live in the city without being registered b ecause they aren’t able to, which means that – even if they are citizens of Kyrgyzstan – they don’t have a legal residence status in Osh. Thus it can be said that state reproduce two different kinds of citizens.

The requirements together with the situation that most house owners don’t provide a tenancy- contract to their tenants make it almost impossible for tenants to register in Osh. However, from the fact that most people migrate because of the lack of work in their place of origin in order to find work in Osh, it can be assumed that most internal migrants don’t have the capital to immediately purchase an own property at their arrival in Osh. Therefore they first have to live as tenants, without registration and therefore without certain basic rights and services (compare 5.2.4). Consequently, it can be argued that the implementation of the registration system doesn’t response to the fact that a high number of people lives as tenants without tenancy agreement. State discriminates tenants as it does n’t give them the possibility to register in Osh, in order to have a legal residence status. The city registration therefore becomes something exclusive, only available for people who are wealthy enough to purchase an own property. The division of society through those high requirements doesn’t only separate tenants from owners of property. Regarding The requirements together with the situation that most house owners don’t provide a tenancy- contract to their tenants make it almost impossible for tenants to register in Osh. However, from the fact that most people migrate because of the lack of work in their place of origin in order to find work in Osh, it can be assumed that most internal migrants don’t have the capital to immediately purchase an own property at their arrival in Osh. Therefore they first have to live as tenants, without registration and therefore without certain basic rights and services (compare 5.2.4). Consequently, it can be argued that the implementation of the registration system doesn’t response to the fact that a high number of people lives as tenants without tenancy agreement. State discriminates tenants as it does n’t give them the possibility to register in Osh, in order to have a legal residence status. The city registration therefore becomes something exclusive, only available for people who are wealthy enough to purchase an own property. The division of society through those high requirements doesn’t only separate tenants from owners of property. Regarding