“Sairam Sabosi”, #2-3, 2009
M. Tozhiev

   Personal attitudes towards each other and the greed in our society can be seen at the border.
   Recently, together a “BBC” correspondent we drove to the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, where we saw this ongoing situation and fallen spirits.
   Young men, only twenty years or so, offer to take you easily across the border for 2000 tenge. We have seen the pictures where these young people make money.
   We have seen how the police communicate with migrant workers. After a while we saw that on arrival the group of migrant workers to Kazakhstan, the police take them aside and threaten them. Then everyone is asked for the amount of two thousand tenge. One of the migrants shouted: “Do not give a penny! I worked three months away from my family, and worked for my children. Why I should give you the money?” in order to assert their rights.
   But police did not respond to his words, and only said to the three guys standing next to him: “This is you”. Only then we realized that the police use this as an opportunity to threaten and deceive these migrant workers.
   There are always migrants on the border. Usually, they gather in one group, forcibly deprived of their passports, and if someone begins to assert their rights, then physical force is applied. Others, who have witnessed such a situation, are then willing to pay five thousand tenge.
   On the Uzbek side this can also apply to migrant workers. We saw a woman who came out of the gate. We spoke to her as she passed the PPC and she began to cry. She said that there is nothing human here. There was a woman and she was being beaten. When I saw one of the police beating a woman fifty years old, I stood up for her and the soldiers, of the same age as my son, started beating me. They have one goal: to obtain a bribe from migrant workers.
   The Holy Book says that this is equivalent to 70 sins. Such deception is not approved by the people of any religion of peace. For such people there will be the heaviest punishment.
   After seeing the situation on the borders, we went to Shymkent. On the way we had a conversation with the taxi driver. He explained that six months ago he worked at the border and that he had to go through this.
   «We try to get every person crossing the border between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to take a bribe. On one day we can earn up to two thousand dollars. Part of the money is given to border guards. If the light at the gate and the computers are turned on and off we immediately know that the boss needs to collect money. Afterwards I ceased to bribe border guards and I have been forbidden to work there. During one year of work at the border I now have a two-story house and a car,” said a former worker at the border.
   Will this bring happiness to people when money and things are earned in such a dirty way? Everyone should remember that happiness is not another mountain to build.