Migrant Worker Abuse in Sochi

[mucifer]

Since 2007, when Russia won the coveted bid to host next month’s Winter Games, thousands of laborers have traveled to Sochi–a Black Sea resort community and one of the warmest places in the country–to build two clusters of venues, packed with over 100 Olympic sites. They came looking for work from countries like Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. But hundreds have since complained about lack of pay, excessive hours, overcrowded housing, inadequate food, and, in recent months, unlawful detentions and hasty deportations.

Both Russian and Olympic officials have acknowledged the existence of wage irregularities, but insist that the problem has been dealt with. Russian authorities have suggested that immigration irregularities vastly outweigh those related to pay. and stand by their right to deport migrant workers in the country illegally.

Semyon Semonov, who runs a local workers’ rights organization in Sochi, has seen these abuses firsthand. As coordinator of Memorial’s Migration and Law Network, he’s accounted for over 700 laborers who have not been paid. When trying to resolve these problems, Memorial has been met by government officials with indifference and, at times, even aggression.

“The government has systematically been cracking down on all sorts of civil society rights,” said Susan Corke, head of Eurasia/Russia programs at Freedom House. “It’s contributed to an environment where violence and discrimination and nationalism are given more space, and [people] with non-slavic appearances become a target.”

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-human-cost-sochi

[jakeXT]

1. Probably nobody can beat our Qatari friends

Qatar World Cup: 185 Nepalese died in 2013 – official records

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/24/qatar-2022-world-cup-185-nepalese-workers-died-2013