Victims not only face rape, beatings, and other abuses, but sometimes they are killed. This may be what happened to Oxana Rantseva, a Russian languages student trafficked to Cyprus. After accepting a job as a translator, the 20-year-old was instead forced to sign a dancing contract. “Oxana didn’t expect that she would have to work as a dancer, and she especially did not expect that she would have to perform [sexual services],” attorney Lyudmila Churkina told the
Moscow News
(Arutunyan, 2010). Nine days after Oxana escaped, Marios Athanasiou—the manager of the nightclub Zigos Cabaret, where Oxana was forced to work—found her in a disco and took her to the police. Officials believe that Athanasiou had hoped police would deport Oxana so that he could get another dancer to replace her, but police found Oxana’s status legal and asked Athanasiou to take her to an immigration office at 7 a.m. (Arutunyan, 2010). At 6 a.m. Athanasiou took Oxana to the apartment of another Zigos Cabaret employee. Just half an hour later Oxana was found dead in the street. The balcony of the apartment was open, and a bedspread was tied to a railing (Arutunyan, 2010). A Cyprus court ruled in 2001 that Oxana’s death was an accident, but a separate autopsy conducted in Russia found that she may have been killed. Russian forensic officials found “that Ms. Rantseva had died in strange and [unclear] circumstances requiring additional investigation, [which] were forwarded to the Cypriot authorities.” Russian officials’ request for a new investigation was denied (Arutunyan, 2010).
Oxana’s father, Nikolai Rantsev, filed suit in the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg. The court found that Cyprus and Russia had failed to protect Oxana from human trafficking and fined Cyprus $53,544 and Russia $2,677.20 (Arutunyan, 2010). After the ruling, Cyprus acknowledged that it had violated articles of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and agreed to pay damages to Rantsev. It also appointed three independent criminal investigators to probe into Oxana’s death. Russia, which has not ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, has yet to respond to the ruling (Burkov, 2010; Arutunyan, 2010; ECHR, 2010). The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has asked Russia to sign and ratify the convention. “Russia will have to change its legislation,” Jannick Devaux, PACE representative of the assembly’s Equal Opportunities Committee, told the
Moscow News
. Because the Duma has to ratify it, “it will take some time, but the faster they do it the better” (Arutunyan, 2010).
WHAT HAPPENS TO VICTIMS AFTER TRAFFICKING
Russia’s anti-trafficking response is not victim-centered, nor does it sufficiently recognize human trafficking as a violation of the rights of the individual (Tiurukanova, 2006). The government has not developed or employed a formal system to guide officials in proactive identification of trafficking victims. Identified foreign victims are not always referred to NGOs for assistance but instead held in detention centers and deported. For instance, in January 2010 the government placed four identified victims of sex trafficking from Africa in a temporary detention facility for foreign nationals pending deportation, instead of referring them to NGOs for assistance. It is unknown whether the victims were deported (U.S. Department of State, 2010, 2012). The number of victims referred by the government to obtain assistance appears to be decreasing. In 2008 roughly 56 victims were referred for assistance by authorities compared to “at least” 12 victims in 2009. It is difficult to determine how many victims the government or NGOs have assisted, as there continue to be no official statistics on the matter (U.S. Department of State, 2010, 2012). Few municipalities have referral and identification systems in place. Although 226 trafficking victims were assisted in 2007, most were referred outside Russia by international NGOs or the IOM (U.S. Department of State, 2008).
Government assistance is not adequately targeted to the particular issues faced by trafficking victims. Victims tend to be placed in homeless or domestic-violence shelters, which are not able to address their needs. This situation makes NGOs responsible for victim services by default. However, local anti-trafficking NGOs lack the government funding necessary to supply victims with adequate resources and aid. As a result, even when the police do refer victims to a local anti-trafficking NGO, the NGO simply does not have the means to provide the critical services required by trafficking victims, such as medical aid, legal assistance, shelter, and psychological counseling. For instance, the shelter Oratorium, located in the southern city of Astrakhan, has a staff of only four employees and nine part-time volunteers (former trafficking victims). The shelter aided seven victims between 2010 and 2011 (U.S. Department of State, 2008, 2010; Narizhnaya, 2011).
There are no formal legal alternatives to deportation for foreign victims, though victims who participate in the prosecution of their trafficker are allowed to stay in Russia until the investigation and prosecution are complete. There is a witness protection program, but only two trafficking victims benefited from the program in 2007, and no victims of trafficking were assisted by the program in 2008. At least one victim benefited from the program in 2009 (U.S. Department of State, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012). Victims who are from other nations or even different regions of Russia (from where they are residing) are often refused access to state-run social assistance and health care (U.S. Department of State, 2008). The reality is that most foreign victims are neither deported nor supported as witnesses in a prosecution. Instead, they are often released (U.S. Department of State, 2012). This leaves victims without proper services and places them in a position where they are at risk for potential re-trafficking or retribution.
Of particular concern is the number of shelters and rehabilitation centers that have closed. For instance, in 2009 alone, nine rehabilitation centers operated by NGOs in Russia were closed (Arutunyan, 2010). Among them was an IOM-run shelter and rehabilitation center in Moscow (U.S. Department of State, 2010). From the time it opened (with foreign funding) in March 2006 until its closure in November 2009, the IOM-run shelter assisted 423 female and male victims of sex and labor trafficking. The Russian government failed to allocate funding to prevent the closure. The result is even fewer available resources for victims (U.S. Department of State, 2010, 2012).
WHAT HAPPENS TO TRAFFICKERS
The Russian government does not collect, maintain, or perform statistical analysis on data from trafficking cases, so the exact number of prosecutions, convictions, and sentences of human traffickers in Russia is not known (U.S. Department of State, 2008). Part of the problem is that Russia does not have a comprehensive anti-trafficking law. As a result of international and domestic pressures, Russia created a draft of such a law. But instead of building upon the draft, a general and skeletal bill, “On Introducing Changes and Amendments to the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation,” was passed in 2003, adding Articles 127.1 and 127.2 to the Criminal Code. Unlike the draft bill, Article 127 fails to give law enforcement the infrastructure necessary to enforce the laws effectively (McCarthy, 2010). “This makes it more difficult to investigate and prosecute recruiters, and to aid victims,” Lyudmila Churkina said (Arutunyan, 2010).
Available statistics on human trafficking in Russia make it clear that Article 127 is not always used. When it is used, it is typically applied only in cases of women trafficked for sexual exploitation within Russia (90 percent of registered cases) and from Russia to other nations (10 percent of registered cases), not in cases of people trafficked from other nations into Russia (Tiurukanova, 2006). The largest number of identified human trafficking cases in 2006 and 2007 were identified under Article 241 (organization of prostitution) and Article 242 (criminalizing the production and distribution of illegal pornographic material). Roughly 3,000 cases were identified under Article 241 and more than 6,000 under Article 242. There were 584 cases identified under Article 240 (forcing to engage in prostitution) in 2006, and 655 in 2007. Fewer cases were identified under the specific offense of trafficking in persons. Under Article 127.1, only 106 cases of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation were identified in 2006, and 112 in 2007. Even fewer cases of slave labor were identified under Article 127.2—19 in 2006 and 39 in 2007 (UNODC, 2009a). These numbers are significant because it appears that only Article 127.1 and Article 242 are deemed to be grave crimes.
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Even those charged under 242 tend to face minimal sentencing. According to Tiurukanova, there are negligible consequences for persons who perform acts that fall under 242.1:
As a rule criminal article 73 is used in sentencing for individuals who commit crimes under article 242.1, resulting in probation sentences or sentences using the lowest sanctions defined under article 242.1. For example, Moscow’s Dorogomilovsky district court reviewed a criminal case against [a] citizen, Kuznetsov, for distribution of child pornography, including sexual acts with children, on the internet network. Kuznetsov was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. In a similar case, [another] citizen, Drozdov, was sentenced by Ekaterinburg’s Kirovsky district court to three years’ probation, with a probation period of two years. (Tiurukanova, 2006: p. 44)
Available conviction and sentencing information on traffickers in Russia is scant. In 2004, 6 people were sentenced under Article 127.1 and 3 under 127.2 (Tiurukanova, 2006). In 2007, 46 persons were convicted of trafficking offenses, and 45 persons were sentenced and imprisoned. In 2008 there were 38 convictions under Article 127, 2 of which were for forced-labor offenses. In 2009 the number of convictions rose significantly: 76 persons were convicted under Article 127, 10 of them for forced-labor offenses (U.S. Department of State, 2008). In 2009 and 2010 the government convicted 76 and 42 traffickers, respectively. Media reports reveal that 24 of the convicted traffickers in 2009 received sentences ranging from 6 months to 13 years’ imprisonment. Of the 42 traffickers convicted in 2010, only 31 received sentences, which ranged from several months’ to 12 years’ imprisonment. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is undergoing a massive reorganization that officials state has adversely affected law enforcement’s ability to perform trafficking investigations. That said, convictions have not yet declined. In 2011, 42 persons were convicted of trafficking offenses under Article 127.1 or 127.2; 11 were convicted of forced-labor offenses. Not all sentences are known, but 19 of those convicted of sex-trafficking offenses in 2011 received sentences ranging from 4 to 19 years’ imprisonment (U.S. Department of State, 2010, 2011, 2012).
There are reports of continuing collusion among government officials in human trafficking cases. In January 2010 a senior district police commissioner was convicted and sentenced to 8 years’ imprisonment for taking passports and travel documents from migrants and forcing them to work as agricultural laborers. Another instance of complicity involves a senior military officer who organized an international human trafficking ring. Dmitry Strykanova, a lieutenant colonel in Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency (GRU), and 10 others trafficked 129 women and girls from eastern Europe to western Europe and the Middle East from 1999 to 2007 for the purposes of forced prostitution. Strykanova was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment on April 25, 2011 (U.S. Department of State, 2010; World News—Russian Opinion, 2011). In February 2010 media sources reported on a forced-labor trafficking ring that was in existence between 2006 and 2008 and allegedly involved a high-level official in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Experts believe that members of the riot police kidnapped migrant workers and forced them to work in the homes of officials and on police construction projects (U.S. Department of State, 2010).
INTERNAL EFFORTS TO DECREASE TRAFFICKING
Russia ratified the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and its supplementing Protocol on Trafficking in Persons in 2004. Yet there are no coordinating mechanisms to address human trafficking that would put Russia in full conformity with its international obligations under the ratified conventions (Tiurukanova, 2006). In addition to having defined human trafficking in its criminal code, the nation has taken some internal steps to eliminate trafficking—such as active monitoring of emigration and immigration patterns and an increase in state-controlled media coverage and documentaries on trafficking. But minimal government money is given to local anti-trafficking NGOs, and overall, anti-trafficking initiatives are fragmented and lack coordination (Tiurukanova, 2006; U.S. Department of State, 2008).
Until November 2008, Article 127.1 of Russia’s Criminal Code read: “Trafficking in persons, i.e., the buying-selling of a person or other actions committed for the purpose of such person’s exploitation in the form of recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of such person—shall be punishable by a term of imprisonment of up to 5 years.” This language was deemed confusing to law enforcement, since the wording created uncertainty as to whether the buying and selling had to relate to the exploitation or whether it could stand alone (McCarthy, 2010). In November 2008 an amendment to Article 127.1 was passed specifying that
any
transaction involving a human being is a crime. The amendment also added two aggravating factors: (1) trafficking of persons known to be helpless or dependent on the accused and (2) trafficking committed against a woman whom the accused knew to be pregnant. The minimum prison sentence for 127.1 rose from “up to 5 years” to “up to 6 years.” This step qualified it as a grave crime and thereby grants law enforcement additional investigative tools that they did not have previously (McCarthy, 2010).
Despite the amendment, the existing law-enforcement system presents significant obstacles to the success of anti-trafficking efforts. A strict separation between investigative and prosecutorial functions creates a situation in which there is no ownership of a case from start to finish. There are various points during the investigative and prosecutorial process when a case can have its classification changed. For instance, the criminal investigator can alter the charges after opening a case and during the investigation. Also, the classification of a case can be changed in the oversight process by the head of the investigative agency to which the criminal investigator reports. The state prosecutor can change his or her mind and refuse to support the charges in court, and the judge can reclassify the charges upon hearing the case (McCarthy, 2010).