Abducted and Sold - Forced Workers in Russia

According to estimates, more than a million people in the Russian Federation work under slave-like conditions. On the basis of absolute numbers, this places Russia in seventh place on the most recent Global Slavery Index to be published by the human rights organization Walk Free Foundation. Many of the 'slaves' were violently abducted. Politicians and society as a whole are silent on the problem.

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.