Vietnam workers kept like slaves at factory in Russia

The BBC has found disturbing evidence of Vietnamese textile workers being kept in slave-like conditions at a Vietnamese-run factory in Russia.

Staff at Vinastar, a medium-sized business in the village of Savino south-east of Moscow, said they were being forced to work up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week.

They said they were poorly fed, beaten up regularly and forbidden to leave the factory premises.

"I have been working here for 18 months," said one of the factory workers, Nguyen Thi Bich Tuyen.

"I'm barely paid enough to afford two meals a day - a bowl of rice and some bread. We are often beaten up. Not so long ago, 20 people were beaten up."
By the time the BBC visited the factory last week, production had stopped but factory workers told us security guards were not allowing them to leave.

We found 75 people sharing four small rooms, two of which did not even have windows

Earlier this year, workers went on strike. Factory owners invited diplomats from the Vietnamese embassy to talk to staff but embassy officials simply reminded workers that they had signed a legally-binding contract and had to abide by its terms and conditions.

After this strike, according to factory workers, many of them were beaten up.

Weeks after the strike, and a few days after the BBC spoke to migrants, officials from the Russian migration service conducted a surprise raid on the premises of the factory.

They found 75 people locked up in four small rooms. None of the migrants had any documents on them.

The official who organised this raid, Konstantin Pavlov, said they had now contacted the police.

"What we saw at the factory," he said, "bore all the hallmarks of a criminal offence. An investigation is now under way."

The police investigation continues. Owners of the factory could, potentially, be charged for organising the employment of illegal migrants.

While Vinastar's workers are now preparing to go home, this factory was just one of dozens of similar sweatshops run by Vietnamese entrepreneurs in Russia.

The number of Vietnamese workers employed in Russia is likely to be in the thousands, with many of them facing conditions similar to what the BBC found at Vinastar.