Golyanovsky slaves

On October 30, 2012, a group of civic activists of the Alternative movement , accompanied by a team of television journalists, released 12 people from nine storehouses of Sholpan Istanbekova from the back of the 24-hour grocery “Products” on Novosibirsk Street [nine women and three men, citizens of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan ^{[ 16] [17] [18] [19]} . As it turned out, some of them were in slavery for more than 12 years ^[20] .

During the release, store employees grabbed one of the children, put him in a car, and drove away in an unknown direction. As it turned out, the kidnapped girl is the daughter of one of the freed slaves ^[21] .

The head of the Presidential Council on Human Rights, Mikhail Fedotov, during a working meeting with the special envoy of the US Department of State for Supervision and Combating Trafficking in Human Beings, Louis Deback, called slavery “an international evil” ^[22] .

In November 2012, the prosecutor’s office of the Preobrazhensky district of Moscow closed the case of unlawful imprisonment of grocery store employees for lack of evidence of a crime ^{[23] [24]} .

At the beginning of 2013, the lawyers of Golyanov’s slaves appealed to a Russian court complaining about the inaction of the investigators. They complained about the actions of investigator Damir Samerkhanov, in whose proceedings was the criminal case. According to them, the case was opened under article 127 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Illegal deprivation of liberty”, but the investigation refused to hold anyone accountable for forced labor, which is considered a more serious crime in the wording of the criminal code ^[25] .

ECHR complaint

At the end of 2016, Kazakh citizens Fatima and Aliya Musabeyeva, Uzbek citizens Gulnazhar Nazanova and Bakiya Kasymova filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg because of violation of several articles of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights ^[26] , as they were held in slavery. The applicants complain of forced labor, they were forced to work in the shops of the women “for almost 21 hours every day” under the threat of violence, and the employees were not allowed to leave the back room. One of the applicants stated in the complaint that she first left the store only three years after arriving in Moscow.

The workers were also deprived of food; they slept no more than four hours a day; fed them expired food. The complaint also stated that the women did not have regular access to the toilet and medical care and were regularly beaten. Because of the mistreatment, former workers have been diagnosed with various diseases, from memory defects to personality disorders.

In addition, the complaint stated that women had been deprived of effective remedies. According to Mikhail Kushpel, a lawyer of the Civic Assistance Committee, who represented the interests of victims of slavery in Russian courts, “decisions were repeatedly made to refuse to initiate proceedings. We appealed them, a higher investigating authority or the prosecutor’s office canceled these refusals, and after a short time another refusal was made. This happened at least 16 times. " The applicants wrote in a complaint that several times the store employees managed to escape from slavery and reach the police department, but from there they were again returned to the store.

The complaint also states that Article 8 of the Convention has been violated, the right to respect for private and family life. All female slaves became pregnant as a result of sexual abuse. So, the slave Nazanova made an illegal abortion at a later date, and Musabeeva gave birth after release. Kasymova’s children were born in isolation; her eldest daughter died at the age of two, and the son was brought up by the shopkeepers and he was also subjected to ill-treatment ^[27] .

On December 5, 2016, a Kazakh citizen Nesibeli Ibragimova fled from the Products store owned by Zhansul Istanbekova. In late December, the girl turned for help to the Civic Assistance Committee. According to her report, in May 2016 she was invited to work in Moscow, at the first meeting, the hostess selected the documents. Nesibeli Ibragimova was forcibly kept in the store for eight months and constantly beaten ^[28] .

The girl who helped Nesibeli escape found the contacts of the Alternative movement against slavery. His leader Oleg Melnikov came for Nesibeli almost immediately, the girl was found housing, supplying her with clothes and groceries. On the very first day, they went with her to the emergency room, where they witnessed the beatings. Members of the movement raised money to return the girl to Kazakhstan. December 27, she submitted an application to the duty department of the Main Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow.

The Civil Assistance Committee, together with the Memorial Human Rights Center, announced its intention to provide legal assistance to the victim. "We will seek legal proceedings for bodily harm," said lawyer Gulnara Bobodzhanova ^{[29] [30]} .

Almetyevsk Tatar State Drama Theater based on the play by Olzhas Zhanaydarov ^[31] , based on the events in Golyanovo, staged the play "Kibet" ("The Shop") in 2017. According to the plot of the play, Kazakh Ziyash, the owner of a cheap grocery store in Moscow, profits from the slave labor of her compatriots in order to atone for all her sins by building a mosque in her homeland ^{[32] [33]} .

• Slavery in modern Russia