A man who claims to have been held as a slave labourer for 18 years in Russia’s Northern Caucasus region has reportedly escaped. How many more are left behind, asks RFE/RL

A man has been rescued after being held for 18 years as a slave forced to work in brick factories and herd cattle in Dagestan, in Russia’s turbulent Northern Caucasus region, according to Russian media reports.

The 43 -year-old from Murmansk, who was named as Sergei Hlivnym, said he had arrived in Dagestan’s capital Makhachkala in 1996 looking for work. As soon as he got off the bus, his documents were stolen and he was forced to work in a brick factory, where he received only food and clothing for his labour, he said.

He told local media he had attempted to escape several times but was caught, and then forced to work as a cattle herder. The Russian NGO Alternativa said last week they had helped to secure the man’s release – the fifth so far this year. Alternativa says at least 12 people were rescued in 2013.

More than 3m people live in the turbulent, mountainous North Caucasus region, which is bordered by Chechnya, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Cases of forced labour have been reported in the area for several years, but largely go unchecked.

Victims are mostly male and Russian, with some from Belarus. Many say they were approached in Moscow or Yekaterinburg with the offer of work, but after signing contracts they were drugged and transported to Dagestan while they were unconscious. Reports of physical abuse are common.

The use of forced labour is outlawed in Russia. However, according to the 2013 Global Slavery Index, between 490,000 and 540,000 people are believed enslaved in the country, with the majority having been trafficked internationally. It is not known how many people may be working under such conditions in Dagestan.

Nine labourers (five from Belarus) were released in January 2013 with the help of Alternativa. At the time, Nariman Gadzhiyev, who was then Dagestan’s information minister, admitted that “slave labour is not a rare occurrence in Dagestan,” and that it was not confined to the construction industry.

In May 2013, police launched an investigation after one Dagestan blogger claimed there was a functioning slave market behind one of the city’s cinemas where it was possible to purchase a male slave for 15,000 rubles (£235).

The region’s prosecutor’s office announced one year ago, however, that inspections of brickworks in the towns of Makhachkala, Kaspiisk, Kizlyar, and Kizilyurt and in the Babayurt, Kizilyurt, and Karabudakhkent districts failed to yield any evidence of the use of involuntary or slave labour. Those inspections did, however, uncover numerous unspecified violations of labour, land, and tax legislation and of health and safety regulations.

On the whole, the republic’s authorities appear more concerned by the aesthetic and ecological impact of the brickworks and their importance for the republic’s economy than the status of their workforce.

Ramazan Abdulatipov, leader of the Republic, complained in February that seen from the air, Makhachkala is surrounded by flooded craters where clay for bricks has been excavated. Some of those craters are up to 150m in diameter and 25-30m deep. Other abandoned craters are used as rubbish tips, though by law the brickworks owners are obliged to re-cultivate them.

The brickworks are inspected at intervals: four of six brickworks in Kaspiisk inspected last month were ordered to suspend production “temporarily” to address ecological and sanitary norms violations. But any large-scale crackdown or reduction in the total number of such enterprises is unlikely in view of the importance of the construction sector to Dagestan’s ramshackle economy. According to official statistics, the Kaspiisk brickworks alone produce between eight and nine million tons of bricks per year.

In March 2013, an official from the Makhachkala prosecutor’s office for nature conservation told parliament officials that “until recently,” there had been a total of 86 functioning brickworks in Dagestan, 39 of them in Makhachkala and the coastal town of Kaspiisk. One month later, Daghestan’s ecology and natural resources minister Gasan Idrisov cited a figure of 27 for Makhachkala and Kaspiisk.

A version of the article first appeared on Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty