3.3 Trafficking and Forced Labor

"Whether you want to work or not, you will work. We will have you deported."

-Siarkhon Tabarov, a migrant worker who became a victim of forced labor, reporting the words of an employment agency representative.[90] 

Human Rights Watch documented numerous cases in Russia that constitute forced labor of migrant workers. In several cases, workers were trafficked from their home countries into forced labor in Russia. International and Russian law proscribe forced labor and trafficking, and international treaties obligate governments to take measures to prevent and combat trafficking, including for forced labor. The Russian government and labor-sending countries' governments have taken insufficient measures to combat forced labor and trafficking for forced labor to Russia. In addition to the cases documented below, a 2006 study of 442 migrant workers in three regions of Russia, the International Labour Organization (ILO) also documented numerous cases of forced labor and trafficking into forced labor. [91] A 2008 International Organization for Migration (IOM) study examined the experience of 685 men trafficked from Belarus and Ukraine to Russia, overwhelmingly in the construction sector. [92]

In all cases of forced labor and trafficking into forced labor documented by Human Rights Watch, employers' confiscation of migrant workers' passports served as the main method of coercion and served also as a means of confinement. Without a valid passport, a migrant who is stopped by police will be detained in order to establish his or her identity and possibly expelled from the country. Fearing detention by police and expulsion, workers are afraid to leave the employer or intermediary and may be forced to endure abusive work and living conditions to which they did not initially consent, including no payment, long hours, forced confinement at the work site, poor or no food, beatings, and unacceptable living conditions, as described below. Human Rights Watch also found that, in addition to passport confiscation, employers also withheld wages, used physical violence against workers, threatened denunciation to the authorities, and induced indebtedness by issuing fines and deductions in workers' salaries to compel migrant laborers to work. In all cases, the employment conditions in which the workers found themselves were far from those that they had been promised and to which they had had consented voluntarily.

International and National Legal Standards

According to the ILO Convention on Forced Labor (No. 29) forced or compulsory labor "shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily." [93] The ILO elaborates examples of "menace of penalty" to include: "physical violence against a worker or close associates, physical confinement, financial penalties, denunciation to authorities-including police and immigration-and deportation, dismissal from current employment, exclusion from future employment, and the removal of rights and privileges." [94] Examples provided by the ILO of the involuntary nature of work include: physical confinement in the work location, psychological compulsion (order to work backed up by a credible threat of a penalty), induced indebtedness (by falsification of accounts, excessive interest charges, etc.), deception about types and terms of work, withholding and non-payment of wages, and retention of identity documents or other valuable personal possessions. [95]  

Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and article 8 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) prohibit "forced or compulsory labour." [96] The Russian constitution also prohibits forced labor. [97] The Russian labor code also prohibits forced labor and defines it as "work undertaken under threat of any kind of punishment," and, in this context, a worker has the right to refuse to work if wages are not paid on time or not paid in full as well as in cases when his or her life or health are in danger due to insufficient labor protections, including failure to provide the opportunity for the worker to exercise individual or collective rights protection. [98]

Although in the cases of forced labor documented by Human Rights Watch, all of the workers had entered the employment voluntarily, the ILO states that workers have the right to revoke freely given consent, noting "many victims enter forced labour situations initially of their own accord … only to discover later that they are not free to withdraw their labour. They are subsequently unable to leave their work owing to legal, physical or psychological coercion." [99]

In addition, various international bodies have suggested that consent to employment is only truly voluntary if it is free and informed and made with knowledge of the employment conditions being accepted. For example, the European Court of Human Rights, interpreting the European Convention's prohibition of forced labor,[100] found that if an individual "entered the profession . . . with knowledge of the practice complained of," there was no forced labor, as consent was "voluntary."[101] Option 1 of the Draft Trafficking Protocol of April 2000 defined forced labor as "all work or service extracted from any person under threat or use of force [or coercion], and for which the person does not offer himself or herself with free and informed consent."[102] Likewise, in a report addressing an alleged violation of the ILO Forced Labour Convention, the ILO found that impoverished workers, "recruited on the basis of false promises" of "good wages and good working conditions," did not voluntarily consent to their employment relationships.[103] 

Many victims of forced labor Human Rights Watch interviewed were trafficked by intermediaries into the abusive situations. Russia is a party to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (UN Trafficking Protocol). The treaty obligates state parties to take a range of legislative and policy measures to " prevent and combat trafficking in persons," and "protect and assist the victims of such trafficking, with full respect for their human rights ." [104] According to the UN Trafficking Protocol, trafficking includes any act of recruitment, transport, transfer, receipt, sale, or purchase of human beings by force, fraud, deceit or other coercive tactics for the purpose of placing them into conditions of forced labor or practices similar to slavery or servitude. [105] Article 127 of the Russian criminal code prohibits trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. [106] As of this writing, Russia has not signed or ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, which came into force in February 2008. [107]

Trafficking into Forced Labor

Human Rights Watch documented several cases of trafficking into forced labor. Although the cases detailed here concern victims trafficked from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, other organizations have documented similar cases involving victims trafficked from other countries to Russia. The 2008 IOM report on trafficking of men from Belarus and Ukraine found that " adult men were overwhelmingly trafficked for forced labour, mostly in the construction sector in Russia." Consistent with HRW findings for victims of trafficking into forced labor from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the IOM report found "a vast majority of male victims [from Belarus and Ukraine] were recruited with bogus promises of work, generally through personal contacts" and a "combination of abuse or threat of abuse, non-payments, debts and restricted freedom of movement kept many men in situations of exploitation." [108] The United States annual Trafficking in Persons report states that men are trafficked for forced labor from all countries with which Russia maintains a visa-free regime, as well as from Georgia. [109]

Tajikistan-Rostov

After seeing a television advertisement for the employment agency "Vostok-Farm," in Tajikistan, in February 2008, Siarkhon Tabarov, 40, signed an agreement with the agency for work in Russia. Tabarov found the advertisement particularly appealing because a Ministry of Interior of Tajikistan representative was shown complimenting the work of the agency. [110] Around the same time, Shokhmurad Sh., 27, signed an agreement with Vostok-Farm to work in construction. In March 2008, Vostok-Farm paid for Tabarov, Shokhmurad Sh., and 32 others to fly to Rostov, Russia, although all of the workers had been promised work in other locations. [111]

Once the workers arrived in Rostov, Vostok-Farm representatives and the employers immediately confiscated the workers' passports then drove and later forced the workers to walk to a remote mountainous area. Only then did the workers learn that they would be employed a quarry digging stones that would be used for construction, using only hand tools. Several of the workers initially refused, but the Vostok-Farm representative told them, "Whether you want to work or not, you will work. We will deport you." [112]

When the Vostok-Farm representatives and the employers left the workers on the first night, the workers fled to a neighboring village and tried to call the Federal Migration Service in Rostov. However, the Vostok-Farm representative and the employer soon caught up with the group and forced them back to the worksite, threatening them with deportation. [113]    

The workers worked for 85 days at the quarry and were not paid; the employer promised to pay them in November. The workers were forced to live in an abandoned refrigerator truck and in two large cargo containers containing filthy mattresses and some cots. They were given macaroni, bread, and kasha and only two large containers of water for the almost three months that they were there. The workers mostly drank rainwater from puddles or that they managed to collect and cooked using water from a nearby swamp. [114] Several times the workers refused to work, demanding that they be paid or allowed to return home. The employer punished those seen as the initiators of the strike by refusing to give them food for two days. [115]

In May, Tabarov's relatives contacted the International Organization for Migration (IOM) office in Dushanbe. IOM contacted Vostok-Farm, the Ministry of Interior of Tajikistan and the Federal Migration Service in Russia. IOM commissioned a lawyer, Yakub Marufov, to investigate the case. Marufov told Human Rights Watch, "I saw that indeed the conditions [for the workers] were horrible. They were slavery-like conditions. The cargo trailers were not equipped for people to live in, and there was no potable water." [116] A representative of the Migration Service of the Ministry of Interior of Tajikistan and Russian FMS officials arrived on the worksite the next day. The FMS fined the employer for illegal employment of foreigners and forced him to return the workers' passports. Another IOM representative visited soon thereafter and IOM assisted many of the workers in returning to Tajikistan and in receiving medical care. The employer never paid any of the workers. [117]

The director of Vostok-Farm told Human Rights Watch that all of the workers knew that they were going to Rostov for work in a quarry and that only the workers who organized the strikes and refused to work were not paid. Vostok-Farm considers some of the workers in debt to the agency for travel expenses. [118] Shokhmurad Sh. told Human Rights Watch that he received a letter from Vostok-Farm dated December 19 demanding that he pay the travel expenses or face a lawsuit. [119]

Although on the basis of a complaint made by some of the workers' relatives, the General Prosecutor's Office of Tajikistan opened an investigation into possible "Trafficking in Persons," the case was subsequently closed in December for "lack of evidence of a crime." [120] The Migration Service of the Ministry of Interior of Tajikistan would not comment on the case, saying that the person with knowledge of the case was on a business trip. [121]  

Tajikistan-Perm

A 59 year-old worker from Istaravshan, Tajikistan, Shermat Sh., went to Russia in March 2007 after a middleman promised Shermat Sh. work in construction, with a good salary. However, the middleman confiscated Shermat Sh.'s passport and forced him to work on five different worksites, often without pay, and endure harsh living conditions. Shermat Sh. told Human Rights Watch that the middleman similarly abused other groups of migrant workers who were with Shermat Sh. variously in transit and at some of the worksites.

Shermat Sh. arrived in Perm with three others who traveled using the same intermediary. After the group arrived, the middleman confiscated their passports. Instead of arranging the promised construction jobs, the middleman forced the group to pick up garbage at the airport for 10 days. The middleman paid Shermat Sh. 400 rubles (US$17) for this first job. Then the middleman took Shermat Sh. and the other workers to the outskirts of Perm to do construction on a private house. The owner of the house did not pay them the promised sum and the middleman took about 30 percent of what was paid. The middleman then took Shermat Sh. to a construction site where Shermat Sh. and others were forced to work for one month without any pay. [122]

From this site, the middleman took Shermat Sh. to build a foundation for a dacha, or summer cottage, near the village of Mostovoi, in Perm oblast. For about two months the men worked laying the foundation and were forced to sleep in a makeshift shelter in the woods that they had put together themselves from branches, plastic sheeting, and a piece of greenhouse roof. Shermat Sh. told Human Rights Watch, "We were in the Ural mountains in May and it was still cold. The water would freeze in puddles at night." Shermat Sh. also did not get paid for this work. [123]

Shermat Sh. then worked in Perm doing odd jobs on construction sites for restaurants and bars, where the employer paid him regularly 800 rubles (US$34) per day. Shermat Sh. and the other workers were forced to live in one of the buildings they worked on. According to Shermat Sh., "It was very damp. We didn't have beds, we only slept on the floor. It was ok, because anything was ok, as long as the police didn't catch us. [They told us] that if the police caught us, they would detain us for days or take all of our money." Shermat Sh. finally returned to Tajikistan in October 2007, shortly after the middleman had returned his passport. [124]  

Tajikistan-Krasnodar

Safarbek S., a 42-year-old worker from Dushanbe, traveled to Russia in May 2008 with the group of workers whom the Youth Labor Exchange employment agency had promised work on construction sites in Sochi, as described above in Case Study: Tajikistan.

When Safarbek S. arrived in Russia and there was no work organized by the Youth Labor Exchange, he and seven others from the group sought work through the director of a Russian employment firm, who confiscated the men's passports and then sold the men to some factory owners:

The head of a [Russian] employment agency, Zaripov, who was also Tajik, said that he needed ten odd jobs workers immediately. The salary would be 15,000 [rubles per month], good housing… three meals a day. Everything. Work from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. with Sundays off. It sounded fine. Eight of us agreed. He took our passports and said he would take care of our registration and work permit and then return our passports. But he didn't give our passports back, but gave them to some [directors of a sunflower processing plant], who took us to work for them. Zaripov said that we should do whatever these [directors] say. 

They took us to Kropotkino [a small town about 70km from Krasnodar] …We worked from sunrise until 10 p.m. and sometimes even all night. They would turn on spotlights at night [so that we could work]. We did everything! Really difficult labor! Pouring cement… tearing down some walls, some construction finishing work, carried sacks… After a few days, we said to them, 'What is this? No one promised us this.' And they answered, 'We are not going to speak to you; we'll only speak through your supervisor. Your master sold you to us. We gave him money-35,000 rubles (US$1,478). So go and work it off.' … We had a mobile phone and we tried to call Zaripov to sort things out, but he refused to speak with us, saying, 'They did your registration and everything, and that costs money, so now work it off…!"[125]

Another worker, Abdusalom A., was among the group who came from Tajikistan and was then sold to the directors of the sunflower seed processing plant, and he confirmed these events, saying that the employers kept their passports and forced them to work up to 16 hours a day. [126] Safarbek S. and the others prepared to flee from their captors, even without their passports. A few days later, when the employers learned that the men were preparing to leave, they agreed to give the passports back, perhaps also as a result of the intervention of a local Tajik diaspora leader. [127] However, as a condition of returning their passports, the employers forced the men to write statements saying, "I am leaving this job voluntarily and have no grievances against this firm." [128]

Uzbekistan-Orenburg

Ismoil I. , a 27-year-old worker from Uzbekistan told Human Rights Watch that in early 2008 an acquaintance from his hometown was organizing a group of people to go Orenburg to work on construction sites, earning US$1,000 per month. Ismoil I. did not sign any contract with this middleman but he and 25 others paid him US$300 each to organize travel, residency registration and work permits, and food and housing at the worksite.

When Ismoil I. and the others arrived in Orenburg in late February, an employer, whom Ismoil I. believed was a military official, confiscated the group's passports and took the workers to some abandoned military buildings. At the time of the interview with Human Rights Watch, Ismoil I. and the others had been cleaning and renovating the abandoned buildings without pay for almost two months. Ismoil I. told Human Rights Watch, "I have not received any salary. They promised to pay us 5,000-6,000 rubles (US$211-253) for us to do our registration and work permit and additional money for food, [but they have not paid]. To get money for food we started selling construction materials." When Ismoil I. and the others complained, asked for their passports back, or demanded salary or other payments, the employers threatened to have them deported. [129]  

Uzbekistan-Orel

Human Rights Watch documented a case involving 40 workers from Uzbekistan who, through an intermediary, traveled to an employer in Orel, Russia. There they had their passports confiscated, were forced to work up to 18 hours a day, and were beaten frequently. Although the workers in this case were not employed in construction but at a car wash, it is an important example of trafficking into forced labor and also a case in which the victims have challenged their abusers in court.

Human Rights Watch spoke with one of the victims, Faizullo F., from Samarkand, who went to Orel in September 2006 on the offer of a friend. The friend promised Faizullo F. and seven others from Samarkand work in a car wash and 15,000 rubles (US$633) per month as well as daily meals and travel expenses provided by the employer. When the men arrived in Moscow, an associate of the car wash owner met them and took their passports, allegedly to arrange residency registration and work permits, and then drove the men to Orel where they joined over 30 others living together and working at local car washes.

According to Faizullo F., the 40 men lived together above one of the car washes where there was one bathroom and no kitchen. The facility was guarded, and the workers were not allowed to leave it after work. The men worked from 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. After one and a half months of work, the employer told Faizullo F. and the others that they would not be receiving the agreed-upon salary, but only 18 percent of the revenues from the work completed. After some of the workers called a friend from Tashkent to come pick up some of the workers, who had fallen ill, Faizullo F. said that the employer's treatment became even worse. He remembered:

They started to treat us even more harshly. There had been incidents before this as well-beatings, teeth were beaten out, and people had bruises. But [later] they became mean, treated us harshly, issued fines, and we understood that we wouldn't get anything out of them. In May [2007] we started demanding our documents back. Five people even left without getting their documents back.[130]

Faizullo F. recounted an incident about one month later in which he was beaten so badly that he had to be hospitalized:

On the night of June 15, I was called outside. … They brought me to the forest and beat me with guns until I lost consciousness. They brought me back and started to beat the others. There were a lot of them. They had truncheons and wooden planks. They gathered everybody and took away our cell phones. This continued for three days. …[131]

On the third day, Faizullo F. managed to call the police and describe what was happening, but the police did not come. Faizullo F. called again, and only after the emergency call center worker explained to the police that this was the second call regarding this incident and that the call was being recorded, did the police respond. The police took Faizullo F. and some of the others to the hospital, which initially refused to treat him because he had no identity documents. The hospital only accepted Faizullo F. the next day and treated him for 11 days for serious injuries, including a concussion, three broken ribs, cuts, bruises, and severe swelling around the eyes. According to Faizullo F., the police told him that the hospital initially refused to treat him because the employer had used connections to persuade hospital employees to refuse to admit Faizullo F. or the others for treatment. The employer apparently feared that the injuries documented at the hospital could be used in future court proceedings. [132]

The local prosecutor's office has brought criminal charges of "organizing illegal migration" and "participation in a criminal gang using forced labor for the purposes of personal enrichment" against the car wash owner and an associate who met the workers in Moscow and transported them to Orel, and against an employee at the car washes. Similar charges were brought against two managers also employed by the owner, both of whom remain at large. [133] The trial against the accused began on December 17, 2007. Initially, 24 victims filed suit, although most of the victims have now returned to Uzbekistan, complicating further proceedings. The victims are being represented by a Moscow-based lawyer with the financial assistance of the human rights organization Civic Assistance (Grazhdanskoe sodeistvie). [134] Civic Assistance reports that some of the victims have been pressured to drop the charges and remains concerned that a number of other car wash employees implicated in the beatings and other ill-treatment of the workers have not been charged. [135] The International Organization for Migration has also assisted the victims.

Forced Labor and Confiscation of Passports without Trafficking

Some migrant workers told Human Rights Watch that while they were not trafficked, their employers in Russia subjected them to forced labor and confiscation of passports.

Erkin E., from Uzbekistan, told Human Rights Watch that a middleman from Tashkent promised him construction work on a dacha in Moscow earning US$500 per month. When he arrived in Moscow there was no one to meet him, contrary to what had been promised, and he lived in the train station for seven days until two men arrived and offered him work. After one two-week job, he was taken to a site where he worked underground with 85 other migrant workers for seven months. The employer, whom Erkin E. did not know, kept the workers' passports. The men were forced to work from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and were not allowed to leave the premises. Only when the work was complete, were the men released, without being paid. [136]

Dmytro D., a construction worker from Ukraine, told Human Rights Watch that he had worked for about two and a half years building private houses in Moscow oblast in more or less normal conditions, being paid regularly and with good relations with his employer. In June 2007, he had an appendectomy, and was unable to work for a month. His employer then confiscated Dmytro D.'s passport, claiming that Dmytro D. owed him money for the medical treatment. He forced Dmytro D. to work without payment for almost a year. Dmytro D. was afraid to contact the police because he did not have identity documents and was only able to escape this situation by running away. He never received his passport back from his employer. [137]

In mid-February 2008, about 250 people boarded five buses in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, after Uzbek middlemen promised that they would be offered high-paying jobs on construction sites in Moscow. On the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the number of buses was reduced to three, forcing many of the migrant workers to stand or share seats with others for the rest of the journey. When the migrant workers arrived in Moscow on February 21, after eleven days of travel, they were kept in the buses until dark and then taken to a former movie theater in central Moscow. The intermediaries responsible for the workers confiscated their passports. One of the workers, Marat M., told Human Rights Watch: "The passports were taken away from us when we were waiting in the parking lot. If people asked they were allowed to leave the theater to buy groceries, but we couldn't leave because we did not have any documents." [138]

Three other migrant workers interviewed by Human Rights Watch confirmed Marat M.'s story. They explained that when they arrived at the old movie theatre, there were already several hundred other migrant workers living in the theatre. The room was filled with metal bunk beds. There was no shower and only three toilets, only one of which worked. The workers received very little food. [139] Sometimes employers would come and pick out a few workers for short-term work, but Marat M. told Human Rights Watch that he did not leave the theatre for two months. [140]

In April, when the migrant workers started complaining and fights began breaking out between the workers, the employment company returned several workers' passports and sent them to another location in central Moscow. Several of the workers left this second location to look for work. As of September 2008, several of the workers were still living in a third location maintained by the same employment company. According to workers still living there, conditions had improved and they were at that time in possession of their own passports, even though they complained that the employment company was not able to provide them with work and that they therefore did not receive any salaries. [141]