In 2011 I was briefly in Tajikistan. I arrived in the early hours to Dushanbe, spent 24 hours there before starting a 7 hour drive to Khujand. We got in just after 1pm, had lunch, went to the 20 Years of Independence Stadium for a game and finally to our hotel for dinner with FC Khujand club officials. I was there to agree the transfer of a player and coach, a process that dragged out so long that when I came down for breakfast in the morning, my Tajik colleagues were still there with the club officials. Nothing was straightforward in the country. There were levels of bribery that made my Dad and Uncle Kevin laugh when I described them one evening at a Dubs match in Croke Park. In short, Tajikistan was a dirty, mountainy, beautiful, welcoming, infuriating, enthralling failed state. We were stopped 3 times in 1km (on a straight stretch of road in Khujand) by police who looked for bribes. Had we not had our police minder with us, we’d have paid all three. As it was we paid two.
Since that 3 day introduction, I’ve had a great many dealings with Tajiks in Russia and abroad. I’ve presented at university conferences there, recruited students, spoken with parents, professors, professionals and even coached Gaelic Football to Tajik students. Yet the constant pain I feel in relation to the country comes back to one event in 2019 that ended up involving Russian police, a Tajik ‘diaspora assocation’ (they were and are a criminal organisation) and an NGO that pretended to care. It started when I went for a haircut and the barber asked me for help, for his cousin.
Farukh left Russia in 2021 to study in Germany. He didn’t really go to study, but he got a visa thanks to some questionable (by him) ethnic German bloodline. However when I sat in the chair to have a trim, he asked if we could speak privately. He was the only barber in the shop who spoke English, so he knew he was safe. We spoke. His young cousin Salim had finished school in Dushanbe and decided to come to Russia for work. He was promised a job in a hotel and had fallen out of contact with Farukh a week or two after arriving and now 3 months had passed. The job turned out to be on a construction crew, which wasn’t the issue. Farukh had a deeper fear for his young cousin. He asked if I could speak with someone in the media about this.
I thought that odd. Why media I asked?
Because nobody cares. Nobody, or maybe nobody, knows and it’s really bad. I can find him, I need you to help show everyone.
That was a Saturday, the next day we’d training with the Moscow Shamrocks and it was in the back of my mind. I tried to speak with my other half about it and she said forget it, why do I focus on the negative. She was right, in a way. I had better things to worry about. There were GAA World Games coming up, a radio show to manage, my College to direct and a new Master’s degree to prepare. Something niggled about this though. The following Thursday I met Farukh and we went to the site near Shelepikha where he’d tracked down his cousin. He was the same age as the kids I looked after every day. A kid. He was no more than 160cm and looked much smaller due to being thin, gaunt thin. Salim was the oldest 18 year old I’d ever seen.
Salim was given an air ticket to Moscow and arrived in the Russian capital with a dozen other males and 4 females. They were taken to a hostel and in the course of 72 hours bustled to a migration centre, medical clinics and then a police station. It was, Farukh told me as the 3 of us sat in a small cafe near the train station, then they met and Farukh gave him some pocket money, fed him and made Salim promise to stay in touch. Salim, in accented Russian, then told of how the next day he was informed by the local agent that he’d be working with a construction crew for 3 months. Salim protested, insisting that he be sent to the hotel to work. He got slapped around and did what he was told. It was the beginning of a nightmare, he said.
He was moved from the hostel in an eastern suburb of Moscow to a work camp to the West of the city and placed in a 6x3m prefab with 3 other men. He said he found it odd that they had such space. Each inhabitant had a curtained off bed and a locker. That evening he worked overnight and returned to his container early in the morning fit to collapse.
The oldest man, he was Uzbek but Tajik (ethnic) and he said we must drink. I said I need sleep, he said no, drink. One other man, a little older than me, he was drunk. I drank a glass and fell asleep. I woke by the older man shaking me. I got up and the world went around me. He pushed me out of the door and I went to a car and off with a one of the guys from my house.
Farukh saw him hesitate and told him to go on. Salim burst into tears and said he wanted to die. I told them I’d help, even though I didn’t know from what and what to do. Farukh told Salim to come with him, the kid shook his head and said no. He had no passport, would be killed or his parents killed. Farukh pleaded with him to no avail, Salim slouched off past a crowd of students, businesspeople and commuters. Days later I found out from Farukh that Salim suffered his first rape that night same night he spoke about and was forced into prostitution by the job agent. He was just another victim of a culture where Tajik boys and young men get bullied and broken into the sex trade.
I went to a man I’d met at a Nepalese Embassy function 2 years earlier. He headed an NGO which claimed to help migrants in bother. I had only begun explaining the situation, at a Shokoladnitsa cafe in the centre of Moscow, when he raised a hand.
You think this is a problem? (He laughed) My friend, this is what they do. Tajiks, Uzbeks, Afghans they have teen boys to f..k. You know they don’t only work in brick factories in Dagestan. (He laughed) Go back to your college and save children who want to be saved, not these creatures.
He quoted statistics, which the police later confirmed as being true, of 1 in 9 Tajik and 1 in 11 Uzbek males work as prostitutes, by choice or forced. He continued that the Afghan dancing boy phenomenon is as old as the cultures themselves, what else can men do when they are stuck in a foreign country and have no access to women. He also told of the appalling suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction rates among males from these countries. This person is now in Germany working with a refugee organisation after his NGO was defunded in 2022. As abhorrent as his attitude, as corrupt as his activities, he knew exactly what these kids face.
I tried the ‘disapora association’ and knew it was a misstep. You know that feeling when you’re in a room of people and they’re sitting opposite you. You’re there with your friend from work and you get through the initial chit chat and begin the story. The mood shifted, the atmosphere changed, they all looked at one another. The once smiling, open faces close and you know the game is up. I left the office and called Farukh. I told him to get hold of Salim and tell him to be careful. I went back to the College and tried to concentrate on work. At 4pm Farukh called, he’d spoken with Salim. They were meeting 2 days later and he asked if I’d come along.
Farukh and I met, Salim didn’t show. We sat for an hour drinking coffee, him calling his cousin and us discussing our next move. At 7.30pm we left, at 9.15pm Farukh called in tears. Salim was dead. He fell into a pit of water and drowned. As I write this, on May 3rd 2024, over 4 years have passed and I can feel the knot again in my stomach. I met Farukh the next morning at the local police station where the officers were brilliant, kind and curious. Curious about me. I told them briefly what the story was and they asked if I thought it was strange, the timing. I didn’t know, I said.
There was an investigation, statements that said he was walking by a pond/pit, slipped, went through the thin ice and drowned. Attempts were made to save him. His body showed scars of abuse but nothing related to his death. His arms had trackmarks from recent heroin abuse. He weighed 40 kgs when he died. Another dead migrant, there’d be another along to take his place I thought.
Just before covid hit I was in for a trim and spoke with Farukh for the first time in months. Outside the hairdressers I asked him if he forgave me. He hugged me and said there was nothing to forgive. The ‘diaspora association’ had called him and warned him off speaking out, which was moot anyway as the 2 western journalists I’d given the story thought it was pointless. He thanked me for my help and went back inside.
Now, May 3 2024, I think back to what that NGO head told me. I relate it to what happened in Moscow last month. To radicalisation and how we’re terrified of speaking out. The police officer who spoke with me the day after Salim died said - “We’ve tried to bring cases, but they close ranks and we don’t want to get called racists.” When I raised a worry with my former Russian pro-rector in MISIS about about one male student from Afghanistan, he told me to just focus on my work. He was from Kyrgyzstan, my immedaite boss, and said if he worried about every little nuance from Central Asia he’d never have time to breathe.
To prepare myself for this piece I spoke with two friends on Wednesday who could get me information. Annually 45-65 Tajikistani males officially commit suicide, the real figure is 5-10 times higher. In 2023, 71 Tajikistani males were arrested for prostitution, all but 2 paid fines and were released. Russian authorities have taken into care dozens of children who entered Russia alone or without a legal guardian. They are trying to do what they can but it’s an impossible task.
The boys are sold off, passed on, kept by a single gang leader or passed off to other gangs for prostitution. When they grow older they’re used to recruit more boys or to sell drugs or kicked out into the street to make a way for themselves. Many die of drugs, suicide, HIV. They are worthless, broken, shamed. They fall prey to preachers and find comfort or acceptance in their Islam. Some it saves, other it is criminal, more criminal. They get radical with religion. At least two were caught in Syria by Russian troops, who came here as abused boys and found religion and went to join jihadis. It’s their culture, they say. Selling young boys to frustrated Chechens, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Americans, Russians. You say this and you will be attacked as homophobic. But these kids have no choice.
An estimated 1,500 men or boys born in Tajikistan are currently trapped in his system in Russia, in 2021 there were a reported c. 450 in Ukraine.
Humankind is so utterly appalling that sometimes I wonder how the universe allows us to continue existing. Thanks again for opening up our eyes (although, all I really want to do is shut them tight).
The average person is in la la la land whether in Liverpool or Malibu. Alan there are sick evil people out there No one cares no seems to notice as George Carlin once said. Thanks Alan.