Criminals appear to be taking advantage of Russia's student visa system
to force girls into prostitution. Deutsche Welle's Emma Burrows has been
investigating how Nigerians come for university and disappear into the
sex trade.
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 prostitute.
She was driven around Moscow to have sex 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 sex
without a condom, they took back the money they had paid and beat and
molested 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.
Trafficked on student visas
Osakwe's story is not uncommon, said Kenny Kehinde, (pictured) 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 sex 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
sex 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 sex 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.
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 sex, calling the allegation "fiction" and
"absolutely baseless.
The Russian Ministry for
Foreign Affairs, whose embassies issue visas, told DW in a written
statement that all students in Nigeria undergo an interview "without
fail." It also said border officials do not allow entry into the country
without confirmation from the university where they are due to study.
The ministry said it "wanted to emphasize" that individuals are
"personally responsible for adhering to migration legislation."
Russia's Federal Migration Service told DW that it "regularly checks"
for migration violations and that immigration law had been broken in
more than 325,000 cases in the first two months of 2016. Despite several
requests, the agency did not explain how Blessing Osakwe - and girls
like her - could have entered Russia on student visas and apparently
disappeared from authorities' sight for years into the sex trade.
Tackling trafficking
Despite legislation meant to prevent human trafficking, Russia has not
shown a full commitment to tackling the problem, said Andrew Bogrand of
the NGO Democracy International.
"Prosecution, although existent, is very limited," he said. "More
alarming, according to Russia's few women's rights NGOs, is the almost
complete lack of shelter space for women who are victims of sex
trafficking or domestic violence.
"Corruption and trafficking are inextricably linked - and Russia fares
poorly in most corruption indexes," he continued. "As long as the state
continues to turn a blind eye to the problem of corruption, trafficking
will flourish."
'Stay home'
Blessing Osakwe recently returned to Nigeria and hopes to resume her
studies. But her time in Russia has changed her life forever. It remains
unclear whether she will be able to walk properly again.
She has a message for other Nigerian girls who are offered jobs abroad:
"Stay back home, learn to work. Even though the pay is small, it is much
better than coming here to suffer or lose your life."
See the video in the special report by Deutsche Welle below:
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