Russian police free workers from sweatshop

Russian police freed 15 Kyrgyzstan children aged 11 to 17 working as slave labourers in a sweatshop in the Moscow region.

MOSCOW, December 28, 2009 (AFP) - Russian police freed 15 Kyrgyzstan children aged 11 to 17 working as slave labourers in a sweatshop in the Moscow region, the agency Ria-Novosti said Monday.

"An illegal sewing workshop was discovered at the site of a factory in the town of Noginsk. Among the workers, were minors from Kyrgyzstan", a former Soviet Central Asian republic, the police said.

"No salaries had been paid to the minors, they had no days off. These underage slaves were fed twice daily with a ration of break and mayonnaise".

The police also said that some of the children had been mistreated.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants from Kyrgyzstan and other republics of the former Soviet Union arrive to work in Russia each year, often illegally.