Moscow Market Tragedy Refocuses Attention of Tajik Labor Migration Issue

The recent roof collapse at a Moscow market, along with a string of violent incidents in early 2006, underscores the hazards encountered by Tajik migrants in Russia. Widespread abuses are continuing despite the existence of a bilateral treaty that is supposed to regulate labor migration and enhance legal protections for Tajik guest-workers.

Seven Tajiks were among the 68 people, most of them vendors from the Caucasus and Central Asia, who died in the February 23 roof collapse at the Basmanny market in Moscow, the Avesta news agency reported. The incident capped a four-week period filled with tragedy for Tajik migrant workers. On January 26, for example, a Tajik citizen, identified as Iskandar Saidov, was allegedly beaten to death by a police officer at the Cherkizovsky market in the Russian capital. According to Karomat Sharipov, chairman of the Tajik Diaspora Foundation, police refused to take affidavits from numerous witnesses to the incident. Police also reportedly intimidated potential witnesses into remaining silent, Sharipov said in an interview published by the Asia Plus weekly.

Tajik migrants also are suffering at the hands of unscrupulous employers. Late at night on 6 February, for instance, nine Tajik labor migrants died in a fire at a vegetable warehouse complex in a Moscow suburb. The fire reportedly occurred in a temporary construction wagon used to house the migrants that had allegedly been locked from the outside by their employers. A similar incident occurred in Moscow on February 8, when four Tajiks perished in a fire at a construction site.

Such tragedies are not out of the ordinary, observers say. Although there is no official statistics, NGO activists believe hundreds of Tajik guest-workers die in Russia every year in incidents that can be directly linked to discrimination, abuse or unsafe work conditions. The NGO activists base their estimates on reports in Russian and Tajik media.

Despite the evident dangers, Tajiks are compelled to seek employment abroad, mainly in Russia and Kazakhstan, due to the dearth of jobs at home. Some estimates put the number of Tajik migrant workers at around 1 million, or roughly 40 percent of Tajikistan's able-bodied population. Guest-workers are a vital part of the economy, sending an estimated $800 million in remittances every year back to family members in Tajikistan. That figure is roughly double the country's 2006 national budget.

Tajik diplomats in Moscow have demanded thorough investigations into such incidents as Saidov's beating death. Yet, there is little hope these crimes will result in punishment in part because many Tajik victims are undocumented. In a February 28 interview with the RIA Novosti news agency, Tajik Minister for Labor and Social Security Zokirjon Vazirov admitted that only about 10 percent of what he said were 500,000 Tajiks in Russia have proper migration and work authorization. Three-quarters of the Tajiks in Russia held construction and menial service-sector jobs. Vazirov added that "Tajiks to not regard Russia as a foreign state and do not feel foreign in Russia."

Such feelings are not reciprocal. Although Russia needs migrant workers to fill gaps in its labor force, Tajiks, as well as nationals from elsewhere in Central Asia and the Caucasus, often are viewed with hostility and suspicion by Russians. In the wake of the Basmanny Market roof collapse, for example, some reports appeared in the Russian press in which Muscovites complained that the compensation awarded to victims' relatives should be given instead to Russian pensioners.

Undocumented guest-workers are particularly vulnerable to harassment and abuse at the hands of corrupt police and bureaucrats. Authorities often conduct documentation sweeps following incidents such as the early February fires. In such "cleansing" operations, it is not unusual for dozens of illegal workers to be arrested and extorted, NGO activists say. Law enforcement personnel often confiscate passports and hold them until they are "redeemed" by their possessors. One former Tajik national -- who settled in Moscow in the mid 1990s and now works in a law-enforcement agency -- said that many police officers rely on the documentation sweeps to augment their wages. "It has turned into a routine business," the source said. "Visiting construction sites and migrant settlements police officers