To President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach

Dear Mr.Thomas Bach,

Accelerated preparations are taken for XXII Winter Olympic and XI Paralympic Games in Sochi due in 2014. Despite the fact that there are only two months before the start of the games, construction works are taken in a frantic rush. Olympic venues and the adjacent infrastructure are created in a matter of several months, although the work of this scope requires a longer period of time.

Officials from the Russian Olympic Committee are making every effort to compensate the failure to complete constructions of many sports facilities on time. The accelerated pace of work has led to numerous violations of sanitary norms and rules, which ultimately affects the quality and safety of construction objects.

“The Sochi Olympics is the most expensive in the history of the winter and summer Games. In total, it is over 50 billion dollars, which exceeds all costs of sports facilities of all 21 winter Olympics games. In the summer of 2007 in Guatemala, Vladimir Putin said while speaking at the meeting of the International Olympic Committee that the total expenses for the Sochi Olympics Games will be 12 billion dollars,” says the report titled “Winter Olympics Games in the subtropics” by Boris Nemtsov and Leonid Martynyuk, leaders of RPR-Parnas party.

During constructions of tunnels, highways and railways, environmental surveys of adjacent territories and waterways of the city were not conducted. Insufficiently considered constructions along the beds of water bodies of the city as well as incompetent certification of hydraulic structures led to multiple flooding of the capital city of the Winter Olympics Games (see more at www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnQ_zijpgBI).

The flood occurred in the city of Sochi on September 24 clearly demonstrated incompetent design of Olympic facilities and poor quality of construction activities thus confirming facts of large-scale theft of money during constructions.

Construction of Sochi Olympic facilities was marked by numerous human rights violations, in particular, use of labor migrants from Central Asia, which was subjected to systematic exploitation. Migrant workers were kept at construction sites in unsanitary conditions; they were offered bread and cheese and small wages. After protests of migrant workers against long working hours, overtime work without proper payment and other violations of their rights, employers organized deportation of migrants from Russia using their corrupt connections with law enforcement bodies.

As the opening date of the Winter Olympic Games is approaching, lots of migrant workers have been detained and expelled from the country following the direction of the national government of Russia. Policemen and representatives of the Federal Migration Service of Russia conducted targeted clean-ups in the areas compactly resided by migrant workers applying harsh methods of coercion. While detaining migrant workers, the police treated them like second-class citizens, degrading their human dignity.

Alexander Tkachev, the governor of Krasnodar Territory, formally appealed to local Cossacks calling them to take steps to identify and expel migrant workers from the region. Tkachev allocated means from the regional funds to maintain mobile groups of Cossacks for these purposes. To cause broad resonance, he wrote in his blog: “Today during the morning parade, the mobile groups were tasked to clean Sochi of illegal immigrant within two months.” (Read more at www.inagist.com/all/377761079654244353). After five years of slave exploitation of 60,000 labor migrants at the Olympic facilities in Sochi, the latter appeared to be worthless and useless, and the Russian authorities are trying to get rid of them using such a barbaric way.

The outbreak of anti-migration policy of the Russian authorities intensified actions of radical informal youth movements, who take decisive actions against migrant workers. On the night of 1 July, 2013, three young men from Lipetsk pelted Molotov cocktails at the house resided by a team of workers from Uzbekistan. As a result, three migrants were burned alive, and miraculously escaped four labor migrants remained maimed. A similar incident occurred on the night of August 24, when a person was killed after an attack on a house where citizens of Uzbekistan were sleeping. The other three men were seriously wounded and cut.

Given globalization, the modern world faces increasing challenges of large-scale movement of human flows, migrants. To date, the issue of migrants, especially migrant workers, is very relevant in the countries of the Eurasian and North American continents, and the future of these countries will depend on effective solution of this problem. Democratic countries facing the influx of migrants find compromise ways to solve complex migration problems.

While dictatorial ambitions of Vladimir Putin grow, Russia is turning into a police state, and migrant workers who come from Central Asian countries appear to be the most vulnerable citizens of this state. Often those, who violate rights of migrants or commit more serious crimes against them, remain unpunished. Indifference of the authorities of the Central Asian countries to lives of their compatriots abroad makes migrant workers hostages of difficult life circumstances. In particular, labor migrants from Uzbekistan are vulnerable and unprotected in Russia, whom the President officially repudiated.

According to official data from the Central Bank of Russia, labor migrants from Uzbekistan sent home more than six billion U.S. dollars in 2012, which makes 13 percent of the country’s GDP. According to independent experts, cash flows of labor migrants make 25-30 percent of the country’s GDP. Despite the solid support to the country’s economy, President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov has an aversion for his compatriots working abroad.

“I think those, who go to Moscow and sweep streets there, are lazy people. One feels disgusted that Uzbeks go there for a piece of bread. In Uzbekistan, nobody dies of hunger … I call them lazybones, because wishing to earn a lot of money, they go out there and disgrace us all,” he said addressing inhabitants of Jizzakh province, during his visit on 19 June, 2013 to Jizzakh and Syrdarya provinces of Uzbekistan. (See more at www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EM1kc4-5Zs).

The Uzbek diplomatic mission in Russia, which regards its citizens without favor, has completely ceased providing any assistance to its compatriots who have been subject to persecution by the Russian authorities after Karimov’s shameless statements against migrant workers. Except Uzbekistan Embassy and Consulate in Russia, the diplomatic missions of the Central Asian and Caucasian countries assist their citizens in one way or another, who also have become targets for persecution of the official authorities and the Russian radical groups.

Dear Mr.President,

The International Human Rights Organization “Fiery Hearts Club” declares that in Russia there are massive violations of rights of labor migrants from Uzbekistan, the number of which is over five million people. Brazen-faced due to impunity and permissiveness, Russian officials turn workers into slaves thus making huge profits. Hundreds of thousands of people become victims of inhuman treatment of the various structures.

We express our protest against the Russian authorities for their criminal anti-immigrant policies. We appeal to you to affect the Russian authorities to stop massive persecutions of migrant workers.

The International Human Rights Organization “Fiery Hearts Club” has credible information about the upcoming visit of Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov to the Czech Republic due in late December 2013 or early January 2014. Our organization is having negotiations with our partners and colleagues to prepare protests in Prague during the visit of dictator Islam Karimov, which will focus on protecting rights of Uzbek labor migrants, who have to be outside their homeland.

Mutabar Tadjibayeva,

“Fiery Hearts Club” President,

International Human Rights Association