1,200
Vietnamese detained in Russia sweatshop raid
AFP
- 02 August 2013
MOSCOW, Aug 01 (AFP):
Russian police have arrested 1,200 Vietnamese people in a sweatshop raid in
northeastern Moscow where the illegal immigrants were living in squalid
conditions.
"The workers lived in insanitary conditions with their families including
pregnant women and unweaned babies," said police after the operation on
Wednesday.
Police said they also found a woman in critical condition with knife wounds who
had not been given proper medical care.
The workers were sewing clothes with fake designer labels, and TV Centre
television showed the migrants sleeping on improvised wooden bunks.
In an unusual move, the emergency ministry set up a tent camp on Thursday to
house the migrants, with army-style field kitchens serving buckwheat porridge as
well as packed lunches, water and biscuits, a spokeswoman told the ITAR-TASS
news agency.
Russian police periodically raid underground operations in which migrants from
Vietnam and Central Asia live in appalling conditions and are exploited by
employers, but police themselves are notorious for extorting bribes from such
migrants. The underground factory was run by a group of nationals of Iraq,
Syria, Azerbaijan and Vietnam, some of whom had Russian citizenship, police
said.
Investigators have launched criminal action against eight suspected of setting
up a criminal gang and organising illegal migration, while the illegal migrants
face deportation.
The raid came as Moscow police carried out a largescale operation swooping on
illegal migrant workers at several markets.