"But then, who will help those people in trouble?"

A Dispatch from Inna Motornaya, Project Kesher's Regional Representative in Russia

This July I received an e-mail from Natalya Abdullayeva, director of the «Doveriye» (Trust), Center and coordinator of the project, ‘Prevention of Human Trafficking in Central Asia.’ She asked for help for Karakalpak* citizens who were enslaved by a Chechen man in one of district centers of the Volgograd region. Our partners from law enforcement agencies advised me not to interfere in the cause, as close examination of it made it obvious that it was a criminal case. But then, who will help those people in trouble? They have neither passports (they were grabbed away by the trafficker) nor money.

I turned to Sergey Nikolayevich Chernov, our friend and partner from the administrative office of the Volgograd region, the head of department of information policy, who knows me well through our previous activism in the region. He immediately agreed to help me. After he officially appealed to the department of internal affairs, anti-extremism section, a special campaign to release the enslaved people was held. To date, as Sergey Nikolayevich has told me, 3 young people from 24 to 26 years old have returned to their homes in Kara-Kalpak.

When ordinary, adequate, not -indifferent people understand one another and the cause, I am sure we can do a lot to help people in trouble.

─ Inna


Project Kesher activism, including our anti-trafficking work, is rooted in Jewish values.

The Torah teaches,

Do not stand idly by while your neighbor’s blood is shed (Leviticus 19:16).

You must surely open your hand to him or her ( Deuteronomy 15:8);

The redeeming of captives takes precedence over supporting the poor or clothing them. There is no greater mitzvah than redeeming captives.(Maimonides, Mishneh Torah}


*The Karakalpaks are an ethnically diverse Turkic-speaking people living in the isolated delta region to the south of the Aral Sea, north of Turkmenistan and Iran in western Central Asia. The Karakalpaks are one of the poorest ethnic groups within Uzbekistan and they suffer from high unemployment and generally poor living conditions. In recent decades they have had to contend with the effects of the desiccation of the Aral Sea and the lower Amu Darya, which is turning their region into desert. This has led to an evacuation of the rural population and the growth of the southern urban towns.

Information adapted from http://karakalpak.com/