Criminals appear to be taking advantage
of Russia’s student visa system to force girls into pr0stitution. This
report is an investigation of how Nigerians come for university
education in Russia and disappear into the s*x trade.
The victim, Blessing Osakwe
Two years ago a woman came to Blessing
Osakwe’s hometown in the south of Nigeria and told the young woman there
was work for her in Russia. She told Osakwe she would have a job in a
supermarket, and that it would take the her just five or six months to
earn the money to reimburse the costs of the visa and the journey to
Russia. After paying back the $40,000, Osakwe could keep all the money
she made, the woman said.
Osakwe said her parents are very poor
and that the idea of going to Russia to help them and to save money for
her education appealed to her. She agreed. Only when she arrived, did
she discover everything the woman had said was a lie.
There was no supermarket job. Instead,
Osakwe told DW, she was forced to work as a pr0stitute. She was driven
around Moscow to have $.x with men. One night, she was taken to an
apartment building where one man was apparently waiting for her. When
she got inside, she discovered there were eight men. She was forced to
sleep with all of them, she said. When she refused to have $.x without a
c0ndom, they took back the money they had paid and beat and m0lested
her, she said.
Then they threw her from the fourth
floor of the building. Osakwe broke her hip when she hit the ground. She
spent two-days on life-support in the hospital until her treatment was
stopped because, she said, she could not afford to pay. She now cannot
walk properly and is confined to a wheelchair.
Kehinde said many girls forced into $.x work in Russia came to the country on student visas
Trafficked on student visas
Osakwe’s story is not uncommon, said
Kenny Kehinde, who works with several Moscow NGOs focused on preventing
human trafficking. Around 2,000-3,000 Nigerian girls – many from poor,
remote villages – are brought to Russia every year for $.x work, he
said.
“This
is international modern-day slavery, where the girls are brought here
with the help of some Russian government officials, some Nigerian
authorities and so-called ‘madams’ [pimps] who exploit these girls for $.x in Russia,” said Kehinde.
Most of the girls Kehinde dealt with
had come to Russia on student visas, he said. Such visas are not easy to
obtain as universities must provide supporting material for the
applications.
Usman Gafai, head of mission at the
Nigerian Embassy in Moscow, said he, too, was aware of Nigerians being
trafficked for $.x to Russia. “Ten
years ago, it was not such a huge problem as this,” he told DW. “Those
involved are an international cartel. On a daily basis they are growing
and making money out of it.”
The Russian government needed to “carry out proper scrutiny of visa applicants back in Nigeria,” Gafai said.“The majority come to Russia on a student visa, and I want to see more scrutiny of that.”
Kehinde said illiterate teenagers were being trafficked. “How can you bring a girl of 14- or 15-year old to study in a university, when she cannot even read and write?” he asked.
Numerous documents belonging to girls who were trafficked to Russia and exploited examined
Migration violations
DW was able to examine passports and
migration documents belonging to six Nigerian girls, including Blessing
Osakwe, that showed they had arrived in Russia on student visas.
The Smolny Institute of the Russian
Academy of Education in Saint Petersburg told DW it had issued visa
support documents in 2014 for Osakwe to study a Russian-language course
in preparation for entering university. However, in an emailed statement
to DW, the university’s rector, Gaidar Imanov, said she never arrived
at the institute, and the university had no knowledge of whether she had
entered the country.
Similarly, the Baltic Humanitarian
Institute, another St. Petersburg university, confirmed via email it had
issued documents to a would-be student from Nigeria who had never made
contact to begin her course in Russia.
Both universities rejected the notion
that their staff may have been paid to provide documents to students who
were not genuine or to traffic girls to Russia for $.x, calling the
allegation “fiction” and “absolutely baseless.”
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