Seasonal Workers from Vanadzor Victimized in Russia The expression on Harout Ginosyan’s face didn’t exactly exude confidence. All the area laborers had remarked about it. Despite their trepidation, the laborers accepted his proposal since they had to make ends meet somehow. Manik, Davit’s wife, was totally turned off my Harout’s shifty eyes. She urged Davit to steer clear of Harout. “He looks like a swindler. Stay away from him,” was Manik’s advice. Davit paid her no mind and went abroad to work. “The first year, Ishkhan reluctantly gave a small amount of money”. So that he could call them back. The next year he was somehow able to bring Davit back through friends in Russia. He was a walking skeleton; sick and filthy,” Manik recounts. Harout’s brother, Ishkhan Ginosyan from Vanadzor, had long ago planted deep roots in Ufa, a city of some one million just west in the southern Urals of Russia. He remained an Armenian citizen (registered in the Gougarq village of Lori) He owns a bread factory there and a construction company. He brings laborers from Armenia to work on construction projects. Every season, Harout would travel to Vanadzor to gather up day laborers. He would then take them to Ufa and hand them over to his brother’s “keeping”.  Ishkhan would greet the workers in Ufa and then take their passports. He would put the Armenians from Vanadzor to work without pay and next to nothing to eat. This would continue until the time that the relatives of the stranded workers back home would begin to ask questions. The largest group of these exploited workers was back in 2002. That year some 40 men from Vanadzor were taken to Ufa. Later on, all of them were found and returned to Armenia. None of them every received a cent in wages from Ishkhan. Many returned with serious health problems. Even after being treated, their health isn’t 100%. Artur, a Vanadzor resident who worked abroad this year, says that on January 3, Ishkhan visited his home and offered him a laborer’s job at $150 monthly in the construction field. Three days later, a group of men left for Ufa. Harout purchased the tickets and told the men that the cost would be deducted from their wages. Ishkhan met the workers when they arrived in Ufa and immediately put them to work. Other laborers soon joined them. Their passports were immediately taken. They were never paid the first month. They were told it was the cost of the tickets. Afterwards, Ishkhan kept putting off paying their wages; promising to pay them after the next job was completed. He also lied to them, claiming that their wages had been sent to their families in Armenia. Some of the workers were naive enough to believe that they would be paid all the wages due them in one lump sum, at the end of the year. At first, the workers went to the store to make their purchases. They would write up a want list and one of them would go to the store to pick up the items. But they never paid in cash. It was Ishkhan who took care of the store tab. The boss would also call the store in advance, telling the manager not to allow the workers to buy meat or oil. They had to survive on a mix of macaroni and legumes. Ishkhan used to let the workers call home for one minute on his cell phone. But he even stopped this basic service. “We would work 12 hours a day, sometimes up to 16. The placed we slept was lice-ridden. We had no sheets,” Artur recounts. At the end of April, the workers were moved to the district of Mesyagudov. They worked here till the middle of the summer, and then it was back to Ufa. Ishkhan promised the men he would pay them in Ufa. This too was a lie. After they had finished installing the roof at the construction site, Ishkhan never paid them. This was the end of the line for the workers. Some of the men contacted friends living in various Russian cities and were able to leave Ufa with their help. One or two of the men were able to get their passports returned at the Mesyagudov passport office with the aid of a woman from Artik. They found work elsewhere and left. Artur says that even after getting his passport back, he couldn’t go anywhere. “I had no money and my health was poor. Thus, I couldn’t go looking for other work.” “The pain grew worse. He was mostly confined to his cot. His fellow workers would bring back wood and tell him to use a saw in order to work his muscles. But Ishkhan couldn’t care less about Artur’s health. He never took Artur to see a doctor. This situation lasted till the beginning of the summer. The relatives of the workers became concerned. They hadn’t heard anything from their loved ones. They went to various organizations for assistance. Afterwards, Artur’s whereabouts were discovered by Armenian law-enforcement. Ishkhan calculated the worker’s salary, after food and other expenses, and handed Artur 2,000 rubles. “But, he would feed us scraps for days on end,” Artur complains, arguing that the expenses Ishkhan cut from his wages were fictitious. In any event, Artur then paid 1,000 rubles at the airport to avoid being penalized for residing in Russia without proper registration. He returned to Armenia with 1,000 rubles in his pocket. Artur says the workers couldn’t show any resistance to their maltreatment since they were divided up into groups of 6 or 7. “Ishkhan really created an atmosphere of fear in the men. It was like the army or a jail. He picked out one or two guys in the group to act as bullies whenever we got a bit out of line.” Hrach, one of the workers from Vanadzor, says that he and two other men would go through 20 sacks of flour every day baking bread. “We worked day and night, non-stop. When we dozed off on the job due to lack of sleep, old man Ginosyan was there to wake us up.” The name Ishkhan Ginosyan is reviled by even the local workers in Ufa. They know of his treacherous and wicked ways. According to the Vanadzor police, on December 9, 2008, the RA National Security Service launched a criminal investigation regarding Ishkhan Ginosyan for labor exploitation. A month later he was officially charged. He is now being sought by law enforcement officials.