New policies in Moscow target Chinese citizens

Authorities in Moscow have announced a slew of policies aimed at tracking down the few Chinese nationals remaining in the city, including raids on hotels and the use of facial recognition technology to target people evading quarantine.

The move has come on the heels of a sweeping entry ban for Chinese nationals that effectively cut off up to 90% of travellers, after Russia closed the border with China and suspended all rail and most air links.

The outbreak of the new virus in China has infected more than 76,000 people worldwide and killed more than 2,100.

So far Russia has reported only two cases of the disease - Chinese nationals in Siberia who recovered quickly and were released from hospital last week.

But authorities are taking increasingly stringent measures that have alarmed human rights campaigners.

Russian media have reported efforts to pick out Chinese nationals travelling on public transport in the Moscow area.

Metro workers were instructed to stop passengers from China and ask them to fill out a questionnaire asking why they're in Russia, where they're staying, their state of health, and whether they were quarantined on arrival.

Moscow Metro confirmed to The Associated Press that they were "actively monitoring the stations" and that there was a protocol in place for dealing with those who "have recently returned from the China's People's Republic."

"We ask to see their documents and to show us documents (proving) that, if they have recently returned from the China's People's Republic, they have undergone a two-week quarantine period," Yulia Temnikova, Moscow Metro's deputy chief in charge of client and passenger services told the AP.

If there is no proof of quarantine, then Metro workers call an ambulance and ask the person to fill out a form.

On Wednesday, bus and tram drivers around Moscow were reported to have received instructions from the Moscow public transport agency, Mosgortrans, to call their dispatchers if they see Chinese nationals in their buses.

Dispatchers were in turn instructed to call the police, according to a leaked email reportedly sent by Mosgortrans.

Yuri Dashkov of the Public Transport Workers Union started receiving messages from bus and tram drivers about instructions to look for Chinese nationals and report them to the dispatching centre.

Dashkov showed the AP a photo of an email apparently sent by Mosgortrans officials and three photos of command screens installed in buses reading "If Chinese nationals are discovered in the carriage, inform the dispatcher."

The drivers were outraged and didn't know what to do, he said.

The AP was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the email, the photos or messages.

Mosgortrans called the email fake in their official twitter account on Thursday, but the next day confirmed to the AP in a statement that the agency is, in fact, "conducting monitoring" and "sending data to the medics when necessary."

Patrols also have taken place in Yekaterinburg, in the Russian Urals.

For the past three weeks, local Cossacks - conservative, often pro-Kremlin groups - have been going out, looking for Chinese nationals and handing out medical masks.

"Mainly (we approach) people from China, because it is from them that the coronavirus came from, they are the main source," Igor Gorbunov of the Ural Volunteer Cossack Corps told the AP during a patrol Friday.

"But not only them. There are different nationalities, there are many people of Asian appearance, and they seem to be vulnerable to this disease, the coronavirus, because they are the ones who are most often affected. Europeans are not yet affected much," Gorbunov asserted.

Human rights advocates have condemned the focus on Chinese nationals as racial profiling and discrimination.

Alyona Popova, a human rights lawyer, has been challenging Moscow authorities over their use of facial recognition technology in courts in the past year, and argues that using facial recognition to track down Chinese nationals is illegal.

"We have a constitutional right to privacy, and citizens of (other countries) have it according to foreign laws and international law," she said.