“No one must be affected by the torture or other cruel or degrading treatment or punishment” (Article 17, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of Republic of Kazakhstan).

There is an unprecedented case in the South of Kazakhstan. Recently in Abay regional Court for the first of several years the sentence was pronounced under the article 128 of the Criminal Code “Human Trafficking”. On a dock is a young guy Timur (name changed), who decided to earn with not legal way- pimping. Although he did not consider that his work was shameful. In the courtroom, he said that he did a good work, bringing the girls to the men’s apartment and in the bath’s for the comfort. The same “good” intentions made him to take into sexual slavery several citizens from Uzbekistan. Timur will be in prison for six years. It is very difficult to prove the fact of human trafficking in judicial practice and especially to prosecute the man by the article, because of the insufficient evidences. But at this time NGO “Sana-Sezim” rendered a great assistance to the law-enforcement authorities to where turned one of the victims.

A few months earlier in the Uzbek city Samarkand was a meeting of two local girls- 28 years old Rano and 25 years old Munira(names are changed) with the familiar friend Maya. She offered them to work in Shymkent as a waitress in the café for 15 thousand tenge. Further, all on the infamous scheme. Girls crossed the border, where they were met by Timur. He brought them to the apartment, on the pretext of the registration process he took their passport and said that for each of them he paid $ 300. The girls will work off the money, as well as for accommodation and meals by the providing sexual services.   Timur rented two apartments each of which contained 6-7 girls and one administrator. She took requests from clients and led the magazine, in which clearly writtenincomes and expenses of each girl by day: what is the plan, how to work, how much she spends on a taxiand how much must give to the cashier. If she did not come to work with any reason, the debt grew, and on the next day she had to work more. There was also the last column-“bank”, where they wrote the money sent to girl’s relatives. But it included only salaries of administrators. Others do not even have time to work off the debts.  However, “night butterflies” received some cash from Timur. He did not give money only to girls from Uzbekistan. Soon their countrywomen joined to them who also swallowed the bait of Maya.

Rano managed to escape. She asked for the help from one of the clients, who took pity on the girl and bought her to the office of NGO “Sana-Sezim”. It was the beginning of the liberation of women from sexual slavery.

In order to prove the guilty of Timur in human trafficking, the officers of Department on Combatting with Organized Crime conducted with him a fake transaction of purchase and sale of one of the girls and they filmed the whole process on video.

To bring this case to the court and help authorities to collect evidence base is a huge achievement for the NGO “Sana-Sezim”. But the cases of deception of women who became a victim of sexual slavery are much in practice of NGO “Sana-Sezim”. Therefore, one of the priority directions is the prevention of women and children trafficking. For 10 years of NGO “Sana-Sezim”, several projects related to it have already showed the results. In particular the stereotypes are broken that it can happen far away ,not in our country, to the problem are attracted the  attention not only people, but also non-governmental organizations, public authorities, professionals trained  to provide psychological and legal assistance to the victims of human trafficking. 

O.Sivtsova