countygeneral | 10 points | Jan 04 2018 18:55:05

Huge numbers of people in Russia are being exploited to work on farms or in brick factories. The country is a hotbed for modern-day slavery. Some say up to a million people are being exploited. This film follows an NGO trying to rescue them.

Around forty million people around the world are victims of slavery. In addition 152 million girls and boys are forced into child labor, according to current UN reports. More than a million people in the Russian Federation work in slave-like conditions - and those are just the estimates. They’re people like Sasha. He lived near the Russian capital and went to Moscow in search of work. He put himself in the hands of a trafficker who drugged him. Sasha woke up in the Caucasian republic of Dagestan, in a brickyard. He spent weeks working there for no wages until he was liberated by volunteers from the aid organization Alternativa. "I was scared I would be killed if I ran away," says Sasha, now back in Moscow. Alexey Nikitin and Zakir Ismailov are the brains behind Alternativa. This documentary accompanies them as they try to track down missing people - in the brickyards and on the farms of former Soviet republics, but also in Moscow itself. "In Russia people are enslaved by their own fellow-citizens," says Alexey. "That doesn’t happen anywhere else in Europe.” An attorney in labor law and a leading state prosecutor explain the legal loopholes used by the exploiters. They help provide answers to the question: why is eastern Europe ensnared by modern slavery? This film is based on the joint research of the filmmakers and the British newspaper The Guardian.

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previously on DW DocFilms: Soundhunters: A Musical Expedition | Crime Novels and The Third Reich | A North Korean Diary | Marlene Dietrich's Last Dress | Welcome to the 90s: Boy Bands and Girl Groups

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