Working on Russian high-rise flats and other construction sites, these labourers often toil from 6am until 2am the next morning, sometimes in the dark with little safety equipment, the BBC reported on Tuesday, citing testimonies from six defectors.
They were not allowed out of the construction sites for fear that they would escape.
“I felt like I was in a labour camp; a prison without bars,” one worker, who managed to escape Russia last year, told the BBC.
Whatever little sleep they had was in dirty and bug-infested shipping containers or on the floor of unfinished buildings.
“Some people would leave their post to sleep in the day, or fall asleep standing up, but the supervisors would find them and beat them. It was truly like we were dying,” said another worker.
