Translated material
Freed from slavery
In 2016, 1.4 million people were in slavery in Russia. Such data are given in Globalslavryindex - an annual study of the Walk Free Foundation Foundation, which is engaged in the fight against modern forms of slavery. Daria of the Idummin - the listener of the “open planurka” of Samizdat - with a special correspondent of The Bell Svetlana Reuters prepared a text about two slaves for the “friend” who experienced slavery in Russia, and volunteers who helped them.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, from 2004 to 2015, more than nine hundred and sixty crimes were committed in Russia under Article 127 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - “illegal imprisonment”. Of these, seven hundred eighty -nine are associated with people's trafficking, another hundred and seventy -three - using slave labor.
However, the center of migration research (TsMI) believe that there are much more crimes related to slavery. Just law enforcement officers conduct them according to other articles more familiar to them (for example, to involve a minor in committing a crime).
Why is this happening? According to the “slave” articles, it is difficult to collect the evidence base, the police have few personnel with the experience of investigations in the field of human trafficking, and the law on the protection of witnesses is poorly financed. In addition, there are many migrants among the victims. Often they have no documents with them (the owners select them), and law enforcement officers prefer to simply deport these people to their homeland*.An example of how the system works is slavery in a grocery store in the Moscow district of Golyanovo. This story , despite the numerous media publications, stretched for years.
The "family business" of the Istanbekov sisters - Sholpan, Zhanar and Zhansul - flourishing from the zero, not meeting real interference either in the person of officials or from the police. The shops are moving: the very first worked on Uralskaya Street, in 2002, the Mistress of Sholpan Istanbekova started a case of tortures and beatings, but soon Vladimir Putin pardoned her.
Truly loudly, information about slaves in the grocery store dispersed in 2012. In a room located at 11 Novosibirskaya address, slaves were discovered - men, women, children. They were raped, beaten, forced to cripple each other.
But even after the scandal and the liberation of these people, slavery in Golyanov has not gone anywhere. Shops move, close and open again. The alternatives to the volunteers are known about the points on the Shchelkovo highway, the Ural and Ussuri streets. History received new media breathing in 2016.
*The data were collected as part of the non -profit project “Combating human trafficking in Russia, with special attention to women and home workers: assessment, prevention and prevention mechanisms, help to victims” with the support of the international Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent 2015–2017.
"Golyanovo-2"
May 2016. Nadia is twenty years old. She was born and raised in the Kazakhstan Shymkent, did not plan to leave for Moscow. But once the mother -in -law needed money to repay debts and credit. So Nadia was in the Russian capital - she was sold into slavery.
It was the Istanbekov store on Novosibirsk Street in Golyanov. The mother -in -law, who brought Nadia, first said that they would work together, but then disappeared - returned home.
“I didn't want to go to Moscow. First, the husband left, ”recalls Nadia. - The mother -in -law said - there will be nothing: there your husband is waiting for you, there is no need to be afraid. The owner [store] is her brother. When I was a bride, they told: relatives in Moscow, they have their own business, they need to help ... they need an employee. And my husband’s mother said: let's go there the three of us. ”
Nadi’s husband really worked in Moscow, in that very store, but he did not help her - perhaps he was afraid. After the girl was freed, he wrote to her VKontakte, persuaded her to return, swore that everything would be fine. Nadia did not believe.
Seven months passed in captivity. Documents, telephone, even their clothes were taken away. I had to drag heavy, sort and take food. All this time, the owners forced slaves to drink pale vodka. The slaves were sleeping little, they rarely gave them food, never money. When Nadia was not seen, she called the mother -in -law and asked for help. She listened in silence. He dropped the phone. Nadia really wanted to get home.
There was no money or documents to return to Kazakhstan. I had to go to the embassy. Twice there they didn’t even open the door. Nadia was shocked: “They also say:“ We know them for a long time, you cannot do anything! Better be silent, go and forget! You can’t do anything, we can't do anything either. Go home. " How will I forget?! I can’t understand ... it is still repeating, why will no one put an end?! The law is the law! Why? .. I don't understand! "
Nadia ran away in December - on the second attempt. Beathed, she walked with difficulty. Lucky: the passerby helped. That same night, Nadia was handed over to the volunteer movement of the Alternative, which is fighting slavery.
At the end of the month, on New Year's Eve, Nadia received a certificate that allows you to leave the country. Activists of Alternatives paid for the road. The train went from Moscow on December 28. She was met on the third day, the 31st. On the platform, hugging, there were three - Nadia, mother, two -year -old daughter. Everyone cried.
At home, Nadia met many people from a grocery store on Novosibirsk. The Kazakhstani human rights organization "Sana Sazim" provided her with psychological and legal assistance. Talking about this, Nadia is already laughing: it was like a clinic. “She was completely checked, treated. Injections, all appointments - for free, ”she recalls and thinks. After a pause, he begins to speak again, and lightness from her voice disappears: “Of course, there were health problems. You drag a heavy, your back hurts, hungry, beat on your head ... The whole body is bruised. Always mocked. " But it is most painful for the girl to remember the children who have suffered nearby all this time. They grew up in the utility room, slept on the floor and in boxes.
Nadia is free for almost a year. In December - the twenty -second birthday. And even Golyanovo behind, she hardly selects words, speaking of her newly acquired life. There is still work - they took a cook, but living in native Kazakhstan is not easy. After the release, she was shown on TV, and it’s now difficult to get a job: they are afraid that they are looking for Nadia. She is like a trial period. Always.
In Russia, the case is not investigated, although the trial was made even in Kazakhstan. However, Nadia does not give up and still wants to get money from those who decided to make a slave out of her. “I just want my salary - I worked there! Let them give. I don't want to demand anything else. I wrote a statement to the police - Petrovka, 38. I do not know what they will do. There is no answer yet. ”
Escape from the Caucasus
Brick plants in Dagestan are another source of stories about slavery in Russia. The scale of operation at such enterprises is difficult to evaluate. Samizdat has already studied the industry: in Dagestan fifty -five factories, whose main activity is “the production of bricks, tiles and other construction products from burned clay”, their revenue can reach 18.8 million rubles. At the same time, less than one and a half dozen people officially work at forty -nine enterprises.
Alcoholics falling into captivity or homeless are a myth. In fact, drinking in labor slavery is not needed, often there are ordinary people who went to a big city from the village and, not knowing how to build labor relations, begin to look for work at the station.
Mikhail - an orphan, an orphanage, was born in Saratov. Life abandoned him: he lived in Ukraine, and in Moldova, and in various regions of his native country. He came to the capital to work in February 2017.
Mikhail was taken to a brick factory from the area of three stations, promised work at sea: redevelopment, leveling, and tractor. He and another person was put on the bus. That there will be no sea, it became clear only next to Kalmykia. The border guards did not want to miss the bus, but the hosts paid-and the problem was solved. No one fixed the fact of crossing the border. Dagestan was waiting ahead.
So Michael ended up at a brick factory near Makhachkala. They worked there from seven in the morning to nine in the evening and old people and young - about thirty people. There were diseases. The local slave gave birth to a child with hepatitis and abandoned him.
While working on the “brick”, Mikhail dislocated his shoulder, it did not pass a month and a half. Without documents in the hospital, they did not accept. Due to the conflict with the elder, he was transferred to the mountains on the farm of Gergibil. When they broke his head with a shovel, he was taken to the police, but the district police officer decided that he himself was to blame.
“This is the Caucasus, in the family of fifty people,” the former slave grins. “You walk around in a circle - and everyone is relatives.” At a brick factory, two of his comrades disappeared near Makhachkala.
He tried to escape more than once. Once "helped so that they brought back to the farm." The next time the prisoner walked to Makhachkala, leaving behind more than a hundred kilometers. He met the nephew of the local dentist, and he helped him hide with the help of activists of the Alternative movement.
In the summer, Mikhail lived with his sister near Saratov, not too hard to look for the work: “Now I am resting after all this. Yes, and I have no documents to get a job, I do with my friend in my mother in the village. Later, when we enter the city, I will recover. I myself am an orphanage, after the orphanage there was no help to me. ”
Mikhail is not going to declare the police: he believes that he will not prove anything, and is afraid to be extreme. “The documents there were not an option to restore. Well, I’ll say: I am Michael, from there, and they congratulate them, and what? In the republic he came to the FMS, said - I need a certificate to cross the border. They answered: go from here, fool! Though Russia, Dagestan, but there are its own laws. Even if you drive Kalmykia, you need a certificate .... I went to the FMS, and they unfolded: you are a Russian citizen, get on a bus and go, everything will be fine. One FIG - there is a republican border, it is also not easy to drive. The hands will begin to make a picture, and in Dagestan the police can also change the ram, there were such cases. When you tell law enforcement officers, they think - a joke. ”
The cost of salvation
With the release of the problem, the slave does not end. Nowhere to go. There are no documents - they stayed with the owners. There is nowhere to get the money.
All documents remain with the "employer". You can run away, come to the police, but there is a danger that you will be returned to the owners anyway - this is how it happened more than once with the Golyanov slaves. Hence the main answer to the question why they do not run away: the fear of law enforcement agencies prevails.
In addition, many foreigners-foreigners are waiting for deportation or Suvsig-an institution of temporary maintenance, where they can be up to two years, a kind of pre-trial detention center with lightweight conditions.
However, in Russia there are still organizations that help slaves. Activists of Alternatives with the help of donations and their own money free labor slaves in Kazakhstan and Russia, slaves in the Northern Cyprus. Volunteers and human rights activists who are engaged in slaves help individual deputies, the organization on security and cooperation in Europe (OSCE) holds consultations with them, the UN Foundation for modern forms of slavery is taking part with them. The Memorial has the Center “Migration and Law” and the Migrants Reception Clans throughout Russia.
You can apply for free legal assistance in criminal cases to the Fund for supporting the victims of crimes; The Civil Promotion Committee works with lawyers and human rights activists.
The Alternative movement itself never received grants-neither from abroad, nor from Russia. According to the leader of the organization Oleg Melnikov, he and his activists somehow tried to receive a Russian grant for one of the allied NGOs. Won the Cross moves.
According to volunteers, the price of a labor slave in the black market in Russia is fifteen to twenty thousand rubles, slaves in sexual slavery-about one hundred thousand. The salvation of one person needs thirty to seven thousand.
Due to the lack of money, “Alternative” has to decide every day who to save the first.
“This is psychologically difficult,” says Melnikov. - Just recently, I made a choice, but miscalculated: several men were kept in labor slavery at a construction site and threatened to kill, we rescued them. Then it was necessary to save girls from the sexual slavery. One of them did not wait and threw away from the window. There were not enough fifty thousand at the same time to conduct two operations. This is the price of life. ”
When a call comes from relatives or slave itself, the “alternative” finds out where he is and sends a small group. This is, as a rule, Melnikov himself, a person on a “hot line”, a curator in the region. Volunteers and security forces can participate. However, the law enforcement officers do not have to be especially counted.
Why not contact the police? Melnikov identifies this issue among common misconceptions about rescue. The obstacle is hostile relations and weak contacts between law enforcement agencies of various regions. In addition, the process is delayed due to corruption, bureaucracy, and consumption. Information about which region is supposedly located in the region may be inconvenient for the local police. Although, of course, a conscientious policeman can call the activists a request to search and release a person. According to Melnikov, a department for combating human trafficking and slavery is born in the structures of the UK. He calls this an achievement.
One of the main difficulties is where to keep the released, the problem of delaying cases is partly associated with this. There are no such organizations at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, although, according to Melnikov, there should be. In Krasnogorsk there was a shelter (shelter) founded by an “alternative”. In the winter of 2016 it was closed. Activists were accused of organizing illegal migration. This criminal case is still hanging on them.
Should Russia be responsible for those who are in slavery on its territory? Yes, this is its jurisdiction, even if slaveholders do not have Russian citizenship. The country has undertaken obligations under the International European Convention.
Nevertheless, according to lawyers and human rights activists, in Russia, affairs are very poorly investigated.
The lenses of forty -two cameras were watched in Golyanov. They helped the owners monitor slaves, but did not contribute to the disclosure or at least the investigation of the case.
Law enforcement officers refused to initiate slavery in Golyanov nine times, emphasizes the coordinator of the Civil Assistance Committee, Anastasia Denisov, although even the prosecutors supported the human rights activists: “They said the investigating committee: sorry, you did not even analyze these records from surveillance cameras in stores. A towel with brown spots was not sent for examination. They did not provide data whether taxes were paid, what's with labor, work permit. It was done the devil knows what: the departure and removal of children under other people's names, records on other people in maternity hospitals, childbirth in the basements. But for some reason there is no interest to understand. ”
Denisova believes that the problem is in corruption in very high echelons. “Our legal struggle ended with a complaint to the European Court: Russia does not fulfill its obligations - girls are returned back to the owners. At the same time, a criminal case has been instituted in Kazakhstan, and the store in Moscow is really working, people complain, write to the prefecture that they trade in pale vodka at night. Nothing is known that this is suppressed. In the materials of the check are various unsubscribes. Apparently, such a level of protection, which is very difficult to break through, ”the human rights activist believes.
Injuries
Returning to normal life after slavery is difficult and psychologically - people are greatly injured by what happened to them.
“These girls from Golyanov still dream that they will be paid a salary for ten years. Although, of course, they are injured, in my opinion - for life, ”says Denisova. -And the children who grew up in these conditions ... There was a boy there at the age of six looked three or four. In order not to interfere, he was kept almost attached, he has twisted legs, lagging behind in development. Now he is in the boarding school of Uzbekistan, because he was not taken to school. "
The imprisonment in the “Mafia of the Beggars” and sexual slavery breaks the psyche, says Igor Antonov, a driver of the St. Petersburg Night Bus. In the afternoon, he studies on a psychologist, and in the evenings he spends a lot of time on parking lots with homeless people, repel them from recruiters who can take a person directly from the line for food. “The boy to whom the gypsies repelled the spleen,“ then it was removed. In sexual slavery is generally tough. There was a girl, she rolled her lips with silicone, inserted artificial breasts, and then she received an infection. The chest was cut off, she began to go crazy and ended up on the street, ”he recalls.
In fact, everyone who has visited slavery needs help - psychological and medical. Activists have no permanent doctors - there are acquaintances who help if possible. We are talking about serious diseases - pneumonia, bone tuberculosis, old wounds, so professional physical examination and room are required. If these are not citizens of Russia, two options: emergency medical care or for money.
Когда в 2012-м вскрылась история с гольяновскими рабами, правозащитники попросили о помощи психолога Олега Суса, и тот, в свою очередь, подключил нескольких коллег, которые откликнулись и стали помогать на волонтёрской основе. Ольга Коровина, Марина Котлярова, Ирина Григорьева получали за свою работу символические четыреста-пятьсот рублей.
На терапию согласились ходить всего четыре человека, но и те не продержались долго — несколько сеансов. Для первых результатов нужны месяцы. «Но для этого, на мой взгляд, было бы хорошо иметь реабилитационный центр, полностью специализированный, стационары», — говорит Сус. С теми, кто отказался от терапии, он не общался и может лишь предполагать, почему они не согласились: возможно, не видели в этом смысла, или не всегда хорошо знали язык, или боялись рассказывать о пережитом, не хотели вспоминать.
«Это шок после повторяющегося, регулярного насилия, которое стало хроническим, — то, чем отвечает психика, когда сталкивается с чем-то запредельным, чего не может пережить. Люди находились в состоянии так называемого и острого, и хронического посттравматического стрессового расстройства», — объясняет психолог.
С психологической точки зрения, первое, что нужно освобождённым, — человеческое присутствие, разговоры. С ними проводят дебрифинг — беседу, во время которой своими именами называется всё, что с ними произошло. Часто нужно заново расставить по местам, что хорошо, а что плохо.
«Изнутри это ситуация очень специфическая. В Гольянове людей, по большому счёту, никто не охранял! Они целый день работали в магазине, то есть дверь-то была открыта. При этом у них существовала круговая порука. Они занимались сексом, рожали детей... Хозяева пытались организовать зависимое сообщество, типа семьи», — рассказывает Сус.
При этом он отмечает, что сами сёстры-хозяйки — психологи в бытовом смысле этого слова: «Одной из наших подопечных они говорили: вот когда ты ещё немного поработаешь, мы поможем и тебе магазин организовать. Конечно, это всё было вранье».
Истанбековы до сих пор владеют несколькими магазинами в Москве.
По словам Мельникова, очередь из тех, кого нужно освобождать, у «Альтернативы» перевалила за сто человек.