In the Sverdlovsk region, authorities and activists teamed up to assist a Belarusian citizen who had been employed on a farm for ten months, enduring meager rations and limited freedoms in exchange for food and cigarettes. This development was reported by EAN and aligns with ongoing concerns about labor exploitation in rural workplaces.
The worker arrived from the Republic of Belarus to a village named Shadrikha. He described a verbal agreement with the farm owner, who promised a regular monthly wage, though the promised payments never arrived.
According to the worker, no written contract was ever drawn up. He recalls an informal arrangement under which he would earn 25,000 rubles each month. His duties included cleaning up after livestock and then herding them. The farm is sizable, housing roughly 400 animals across deer, cows, sheep, and pigs, making the day-to-day routine arduous and physically demanding.
The man reported a harsh disciplinary regime, including a so-called prohibition on certain actions on the farm. When violations occurred, he alleges, the owner resorted to beating him with a hydraulic hose as a form of punishment.
For months, no salary was paid. The worker stated, with a sense of disbelief, that money was used to support an ex-wife through alimony rather than his own needs, noting that the owner had sent some funds to the man’s former spouse while withholding his own wages.
The worker tried to return to his home country a few months earlier, but alleges that his documents were confiscated. The farmer later claimed that the documents had been lost and then found by the worker, who allegedly hid them. Police later recovered the passport, military ID, and driver’s license belonging to the farmer, complicating the narrative around the ownership and control of the worker’s identity documents.
In the end, the worker received only 15,000 rubles, which allowed him to purchase a ticket back to his hometown. Although he expressed reluctance to file a police report against the employer in Sverdlovsk region, he indicated that he intended to pursue formal complaints once he reached Moscow, as reported by EAN. The man also indicated that there were other workers who had been forcibly detained on the same farm, suggesting a broader pattern of coercive control.
“All the signs of labor slavery are present. This is a typical situation, we encounter this often. The man managed to contact us, so we came from Moscow and took him out,” commented an activist from the Alternative movement, underscoring the persistent challenges of forced labor in certain rural workplaces.
Earlier reporting noted similar concerns, including a case in Kazakhstan involving a guardian who kept his adopted children under enslaving conditions for five years. This broader context highlights a troubling global pattern where vulnerable workers face coercion, debt bondage, and restricted movements under the guise of employment.
(Source: EAN)