VLADIVOSTOK, RUSSIA: Crime, Corruption Persist in Vladivostok

April 23, 2008

by Gregory Feifer

Russia's Far East port city of Vladivostok is notorious for rampant crime and corruption. Residents say the violent killings of the 1990s have subsided. Political analysts say criminals used to influence politicians — now, they are being elected to office.

TRANSCRIPT:

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

Next we're going to a crime-ridden city in a crime-ridden nation. The city is Vladivostok, Russia. It's a port in Russia's Far East, and we mean Far East. If you found this city you do it by going to the map, looking at Moscow, moving your finger seven time zones to the east. Residents say violent gangland killings that made that remote city infamous in the 1990s might have subsided now, but only because now the criminals are moving into politics. NPR's Gregory Feifer reports.

GREGORY FEIFER: It's a dramatic setting, from a bay on the Sea of Japan, Vladivostok rises inland over a series of steep hills lined with water stained soviet high rises.

(Soundbite of waves)

FEIFER: In the port a passenger ship navigates through oily water littered with bobbing plastic bottles and other garbage. Near the water, appealing 19th century buildings overlook teaming streets. In addition to the Russians, there are many Chinese and Koreans here. But apart from its frontier town energy, Vladivostok oozes with something else, crime and corruption. The city is the center of a major fish poaching industry and officials here make fortunes helping criminal groups smuggle timber, cars, and other goods.

VITAL LENA MATUNIF(ph)(Far Eastern State University): (Russian spoken)

FEIFER: Vital Lena Matunif of the Far Eastern State University says at least 70% of the region's natural resources are exported illegally. Vladivostok is holding elections for mayor next month after the previous mayor Vladimir Nikolayev was convicted of selling city land. Nikolayev is believed to be a one-time mafia enforcer whose nickname is Vinnie(ph) Pooh, Russian for Winnie the Pooh. Nikolayev, who's serving time in jail for beating a local official, was elected in 2004 after his main opponent was injured in a grenade explosion. That opponent was no stranger to violence. Unusually for Vladivostok, he had campaigned against corruption. A former mayor in the 1990s, Viktor Cherepkov wage an epoch battle against the then governor and he says several assassination attempts forced him to sleep in his office to protect his family.

Mr. VIKTOR CHEREPKOV (Former Mayor of Vladivostok): (Through translator) When everything else, the governor's people tried to declare me insane. In order to kidnap me from a hospital they controlled, they sprayed mercury inside city hall. When the ambulance staff came, I said I'd rather drink mercury than risk going with them.

FEIFER: Cherepkov says he was beaten, kidnapped, and his son sent to jail on a false charge. But Cherepkov says official corruption today is even worse that it was back them. He says in those days criminal groups might have influenced politicians, but the criminals themselves didn't hold power.

Mr. CHEREPKOV: (Through translator) Today, known criminals pay prevailing huge sums to help fix their position to office. That's how Moscow maintains control out here, because the local authorities know that they can be arrested at any moment if they step out of line.

FEIFER: The current governor denies such accusations. A former businessman, Sergei Darkin, was reappointed to office in 2005. He says there are no improper connections between business and politics in his region.

Governor SERGEI DARKIN (Governor of Primorsky Krai, Russia): (Russian Spoken)

FEIFER: Of course not, he says the region's reputation is beginning to change for the better. On Vladivostok's streets, residents say at least they have constant electricity and heat now, but that nothing has been done to rebuild the city since former Mayor Cherepkov constructed roads here in the 1990s. Cherepkov has been banned from running in next month's mayoral election, which the candidate from the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party is expected to win.

(Soundbite of guitar and singing in Russian)

FEIFER: Back down at the port, busker Serge Sirgumsacoy(ph) plays guitar on the steps of a dusty pedestrian underpass. He says most Vladivostok residents seem to think the city's corruption is normal.

Mr. SERGE SIRGUMSACOY (Busker, Vladivostok): (Russian Spoken)

FEIFER: The authorities spit in people's faces, he says, but they wipe themselves off and continue as if nothing had happened. Nothing will change here, he says, until our people learn that's wrong.

Gregory Feifer, NPR News, Vladivostok.

(Soundbite of guitar and singing in Russian)

RUSSIA: In Russia's Far East, North Koreans Labor Silently

April 13, 2008

by Gregory Feifer

Russia's Far East today resembles the old American Wild West: Rolling hills covered by scrubby evergreen forest called the "taiga" stretch endlessly in vast tracts of unsettled land.

In the 1970s, the Kremlin began building the colossal Baikal-Amur railway to help develop the desolate region. North Korea sent prisoners to labor camps in the area to build the railway, but the project was eventually considered one of the great follies of the Soviet era.

Today the project remains unfinished, but nearly 20 years after the Soviet collapse, North Koreans are still logging Russian forests. They're no longer prisoners, but they're still doing dangerous work and remain isolated from the local population.

Barracks-like housing inside a compound for North Korean laborers in the town of Tynda, in Russia's Far East region of Amur.  Gregory Feifer, NPR

The Forest's Silent Workers

The snow-bound town of Tynda is the project's main crossroads. A collection of Soviet concrete-slab buildings, Tynda is only 30 years old, but it's already decrepit. At the end of a narrow road, a tall gate blocks the compound entrance that sits next to a guardhouse and a big searchlight. The complex is surrounded by an old wooden fence and a string of rusting barbed wire. Inside, conditions are basic — a red communist North Korean flag flies and prominent banners and monuments bear slogans written in large red Korean characters.

During the Cold war, North Korean prisoners were sent to Tynda to help pay off Pyongyang's debt to Moscow. Today, North Koreans travel here voluntarily and work for private Russian logging companies. Only those in good standing with North Korean authorities are allowed to come.

Occasionally, the gate opens to allow laborers through, usually in groups of three. Walking along the road, they look bedraggled and weather beaten, and they're forbidden to speak to anyone. One worker, who speaks fairly good Russian, says he doesn't want to talk because he doesn't understand the language.

Local residents say the workers keep to themselves.

"When we come across them in the forest, they're afraid of us. We used to feel sorry for them looking very poor, dressed in their black work clothes," says Tynda resident Liudmilla Alexandrovna. "But now we're used to them. After all, their lives here are far better than in North Korea."

North Korean characters mark a building at a logging camp 20 miles south of Tynda.  Gregory Feifer, NPR

Backbreaking Work

Logging, one of the main occupations of Russia's Far East, is a poorly regulated industry. Huge volumes of timber are cut illegally and sold cheaply to China, Japan and elsewhere. But most Russians aren't willing to undertake the backbreaking work — legal or illegal. The North Koreans provide a cheap source of labor for the Russian timber companies. They cut and clear wood by hand, without the help of timber harvesters or other heavy machinery.

Estimates of how many North Koreans work in the region vary. One official says there are 1,600. But a former manager with one of the big logging companies says he thinks his firm alone employs around 6,000. And he says there's no shortage of people hoping to improve their bleak lives in North Korea with years of backbreaking labor in Russia's Far East.

Inside one timber company office, North Koreans wearing military-style clothes and pins bearing images of the country's dictator, Kim Jong Il, can be seen coming in and out. Despite their obvious presence, few people in Tynda will talk about the North Korean logging camps, how much the laborers are paid, or in what conditions they live and work.

A logging camp in the forest 20 miles south of Tynda bears a red North Korean flag in the distance.  Gregory Feifer, NPR

"Normal" Relations

Nikolai Sarnovsky, chairman of the Turan-les timber company, says workers' camps are run entirely by North Korean managers as they see fit.

"They live there how they want to, not how I want them to. They even build their own barracks — we only give them the materials to do it. But they carry out all their agreements with us," Sarnovsky says.

There are reports of abuses, frequent accidents, and food shortages. But Russian officials say they don't have jurisdiction over the North Koreans. They say the terms of their work are controlled by an agreement between Moscow and North Korea.

"We cooperate with the North Koreans, but only through the timber companies. We've never had any problems," says Mikhail Mikhailov, deputy head of the regional administration. "In the 30 years the North Koreans have worked here, relations have been perfectly normal."

An Unforgiving Climate

Inside a processing plant 20 miles south of Tynda, a massive saw cuts logs into boards. North Koreans working alongside Russians are only allowed to communicate through their North Korean foreman.

In the surrounding forest, it's desolate and freezing in the winter. In summer, the woods are hot, humid and swarm with mosquitoes. The North Koreans come here for three years and sometimes stay longer.

Russian lumberjack Yuri Mitkin says his Korean counterparts live tough lives in an unforgiving climate.

"It's a very hard life. The work is dangerous and there's nowhere even to wash properly. I don't know how much they're paid, but it can't be a lot. And they're under constant surveillance," Mitkin says.