The lives of Central Asian migrant laborers in Russia have become much worse since the terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall on March 22, 2024, that left more than 140 people dead.
Prior to that attack, these migrant laborers had to contend with racism, including occasional attacks from skinheads, ultra-nationalists, and mistreatment from police. Unscrupulous employers often withheld wages or failed to pay them entirely. But for more than two decades, millions of Central Asian citizens, most from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, have regularly made the journey to Russia to find work as street sweepers and snow shovellers, delivery people, taxi drivers, construction workers, or other menial jobs, The Caspian Post reports citing foreign media.
The Islamic State of Khorasan claimed responsibility for the Crocus City Hall attack, but all the suspects detained in the days after the tragedy originally came from Tajikistan. Russian xenophobia aimed at Central Asians increased significantly. So too did the police and migration authority’s raids on businesses known to hire Central Asians. Russian police stop Central Asian migrants on the street or public transportation to check their documents more frequently.
Migrants in the Moscow area who commit petty crimes or are caught with invalid documents are likely to be sent to the Sakharovo detention center and held there for periods that range from only a few days to months before being deported. Male detainees are pressured to join the Russian military and go fight in Ukraine. The center is gaining a reputation as a place where foreigners, usually from former Soviet republics, are held, often humiliated, and sometimes physically abused.
What goes on in the Sakharovo detention is a microcosm of the difficulties and the prejudice Central Asians face in Russia today. Several citizens from Kyrgyzstan who spent time in the detention center have spoken about their experience. It is unclear why more citizens of Tajikistan or Uzbekistan have not come forward to recount their experiences in Sakharovo, but that might be explained by the nature of their repressive governments back home, where complaining about the state often lands people in prison.
Freedom of speech in Kyrgyzstan, though curtailed recently, is something the people of Kyrgyzstan have been accustomed to during their thirty-three years of independence.
Last Stop Before Leaving Russia
Those detained at the Sakharovo migration center are not violent criminals. Many have simply violated some regulation concerning their stay in Russia, usually work permits that are months or years past their expiration date. Some are illegal migrant laborers who never bothered to register with Russian authorities, but none have committed any serious crimes in Russia. If they had, they would be in a Russian court or a Russian prison.
Moscow’s Sakharovo multifunctional migration center “provides a wide range of services,” including extensions of residency or work permits or applying for Russian citizenship.
Located nearby is the detention center for those who are marked for deportation from Russia.
Bakytgul Moldobayeva is from Kyrgyzstan. Her registration documents to work in Russia expired, and she was caught in the early summer of 2024 and sent to the Sakharovo center.
“The humiliation began as soon as we got to Sakharovo,” Moldobayeva said. “They beat the guys, took their phones, shouted, and treated the woman just as rudely.”
A man using the pseudonym “Azamat,” who was in Sakharovo for more than two weeks, provided more details about what happens to the “guys.”
Azamat said after going through processing and documentation upon entering the center “they (Russian guards) call your name, you go out into the corridor and run. There they hit you on the back of the head and tell you to ‘get moving.’”
Azamat was taken into a place he described as resembling a shower room with tiled floors. “They made me face the wall, forced me to raise my arms up, spread my legs, and began to beat me with a stun gun.” After that, Azamat and other detainees were handcuffed and the guards “started beating [them], one by one… (using) nightsticks and their fists. There were old men among [them], people [his] father’s age.”
Another man, using the pseudonym Alibek, said every day after six in the evening guards started taking away male detainees to a different room and beating them. “No one could sleep because of the screams,” Alibek said and added the beatings often continued until the early hours of the morning. He also claimed all the detainees in his section were severely beaten.
Another man using the pseudonym “Rustam” said he was beaten also, but apart from the physical abuse, Rustam said detention center guards subjected them to humiliating treatment. Like many of the other detainees at Sakharovo, Rustam is a Muslim. “They gave us pork to eat. We were hungry, so we removed the meat and ate what was left,” he explained.
“There were some guys among us who recited Namaz (Muslim prayers),” Rustam recalled. “When one guy was reciting Namaz, the guards entered… one of [the guards] hit him in the face twice.” Rustam said he and the some of the other detainees explained to the guards that the man was only saying prayers, to which the guards replied, “Let him go to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and say his prayer there.”
Moldobayeva did not say anything about women being physically abused, but she said the guards yelled at them, treated them disrespectfully, and suggested to some women: “You could be my temporary wife.”
Azamat, Rustam, and Moldobayeva all complained about the cold temperature inside the center and said some of beds were essentially steel plates and had no mattresses.
Askar Uskenbayev spent several days in Sakharovo. He said, “There is only one name for the mattresses on the beds at Sakharovo. It’s better to lay out your T-shirt and sleep on it.” Uskenbayev did not say what the “one name” was for the mattresses, but it is not hard to guess.
Uskenbayev had been coming to work in Russia for six or seven years and was detained in the Moscow metro because when police checked his documents, he had an unpaid fine from a year ago. He said once inside Sakharov, he met other people from Kyrgyzstan who had been there for six months.
Detainees are allowed into the courtyard once a day to walk around and get some fresh air. Azamat described the courtyard as a “cage, fenced on all four sides with a metal mesh [and] also mesh overhead [so] … a person cannot escape.”
Mobile telephones are confiscated upon entry to Sakharovo, in part to prevent anyone from taking videos or photos of the inside of the detention center. Phones are not returned to detainees until prior to their deportation. They are allowed to make phone calls every three or four days using the center’s dial telephones, but most people have contact details stored on their mobile phones, so it is only possible to call those people whose phone numbers detainees know by heart.
Another Way Out
Valentins Chupik is a Russian rights defender who championed the cause of migrant laborers in Russia until she was forced to flee in late 2021 due to growing pressure from authorities over her work. She called Sakharovo the “main recruitment center for the war in Ukraine.”
Rahima Aytakhun kyzy (in Kyrgyz language kyzy means “daughter of”) lived in Russia for more than ten years. When her twenty-two-year-old brother went missing in Moscow, she finally found him at the Sakharovo detention center, and Aytakhun kyzy bribed her way into the detention area to see her brother. He also spoke about the abuse of male detainees, including use of electric shock. He said there were regular efforts to recruit detainees to join the Russian military and go to Ukraine and that some of the Central Asian inmates at the center had signed contracts to join the Russian army.
Offers of generous pay, lifetime health insurance and other benefits, and Russian citizenship probably seem more enticing to those who have spent days, weeks, or months being beaten, verbally abused, poorly fed, and cold.
Alibek said Central Asians caught with no documents were kept in the center and routinely beaten until they signed contracts to join the Russian military. “Many Tajiks and Uzbeks [chose to] go to the war.” Alibek added he had been given a choice of joining the Russian army in Ukraine or being deported back to Central Asia and chose to go back home.
It is difficult to obtain concrete figures on how many Central Asian citizens have been incarcerated at Sakharovo. As of mid-June 2024, there were at least 173 Kyrgyz citizens there. In late July, 136 Tajik citizens at Sakharovo were deported back to Tajikistan.
Not Much the Central Asian Governments Can Do
With the exception of Turkmenistan, the Central Asian governments have all warned their citizens about traveling to Russia in the months since the Crocus City Hall attack. These governments have also instructed their citizens not to join any foreign military. The Kyrgyz and Tajik governments have said many times that staff at embassies and consulates in Russia regularly check on their citizens being held at migrant detention centers and follow their cases.
Nearly all those who spoke about their time at the Sakharovo center said they never saw or were in contact with anyone from their embassy. Citizens of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan make up the majority of Central Asian migrant laborers in Russia. The governments of those three countries have urged Russian officials to look into the alleged mistreatment of their citizens. Russian authorities have offered assurances that most complaints are exaggerated and, in those instances when they are valid, the incidents are being investigated.
None of the Central Asian governments are in a position to pressure Russia on the issue, so they must be content with publicly raising the matter and having received an official answer, even if that answer might seem disingenuous.
The overt and growing prejudice in Russia against Central Asian citizens is already causing many from Central Asia to either stay home or seek employment in other countries. Russia is further tightening regulations for Central Asian migrant laborers, limiting the jobs they can do, and urging Central Asians coming to work in Russia not to bring their families.
The harsh treatment at the Sakharovo center is intentional. It sends a message to migrant laborers, particularly from Central Asia, that Russia does not want them, ignoring the fact Russia needs them to perform the many humble tasks that are essential for Russia’s economy. It is doubtful those who passed through the Sakharovo center will be looking to come back to Russia to work anytime soon, if ever.
