Zara Modelling Agency director: I was tormented by haloperidol and tied to bed

A former director of Zara modellong agency Iryna Karayeva has sent a letter from prison.

In April 2007 she was sentenced to 10 years for… human trafficking.

Narodnaya Volya newspaper offers the story of the modeling agency head, slightly abridged.

Fashion Verdict

It is impossible to overstress the role of prison in the life of the modern Belarusian society. In 2004 war on human trafficking was declared in Belarus. As a result, on April 20, 2007 a scar was burnt on my heart, I was sentenced to prison. And this wound is still bleeding.

Investigation lasted for about two years. All this time most of the ten alleged offenders languished in the remand prison in Valadarski Street. I cannot call this investigation anything but torturous. But we could not refuse to participate in the show, the choice had been made for us, and our bitter lot predestined.

To my mind, it was a solemn, carefully orchestrated trial, at the level of Cannes Festival. Directors of almost all modeling agencies in Belarus defiled on the red carpet: Tamara Goncharova, Sergey Nagorny, Sasha Varlamov (them he was just an invited guest and did not expect that no man is a prophet in his own land, and no matter how much good is done by you, there would be more stones than flowers), and other personage of Belarusian beau monde.

One after another, skeletons were fished out from old dusty closets. Testimony of victims was collected by any means: with the help of persuasion, or by psychological pressure… But a temptation to hype “a case of modeling agencies’ directors” was too strong: new ranks and new positions in serious offices were at stake…

All the persons involved in the case en masse were charged with human trafficking as members of an organized group, without discrimination. First they assured us of friendliness, but in fact we were stoned.

Article 181 – 10 years of imprisonment

Once I had a hi-tech office in central Minsk. I had an office with a computer table. I saw a panorama of the city from enormous windows. The sky seemed cloudless and clear. A secretary asked me, whether I am going to drink coffee and what events are to be planned for this day.

A driver in a Mercedes Elegance was waiting for me, to take me for a lunch. In a glamourous café me and my friends shoveled down sushi, happy and content, discussing the high life of the city.

My phone informed me about the news of the fashion world, from abroad, by twiddles and the voices of foreign bookers.

The Alpes in winter, the Cote d’Azur in summer was a standard set of luxury for every other metrosexualess and cosmopolitan. In such civilized cities as Moscow it would unlikely cause an envy attack of normal people.

But for a proud and independent Belarus, which is marching under a flag of unyielding struggle against model business, which is a manifestation of sexual exploitation in general and of exporting local beauties abroad, for foreign catwalks in particular, it was alien and unacceptable…

It is not Rublyovka with Petr Listerman here!

After-life

When my fragile wrists were handcuffed, after-life started for me. I was a jackpot for local limbs of the law, beginners in human trafficking combat, who found a bean in the cake!

Investigators even reproached me for my haute couture wardrobe!

In one of his speeches a former deputy head of presidential administration, who also is UN Special Rapporteur for Belarus on Human Trafficking in Person, Natallya Pyatkevich (Petkevich) noted: “Women have all possibilities to realize their potential in all roles.”

But any woman also has a right for her own body. And no one wants to give up this right to someone.

So why directors of modeling agencies were punished? For helping some of our common girls to immerse into Dolce Vita, previously unfamiliar for them, or, for lucky few, for becoming permanent dwellers of Moscow-area de luxe settlements, where they are living happily ever since?

For many girls we were fairy godmothers, who turned Cinderellas into wonderful princesses. Poor, poor fairy godmothers!

In revenge for that I came through a sausage grinder of all punitive institutions of Belarus. I do not remember any other prisoner, who had been taken to the mental hospital so many times as me. I was tormented with haloperidol and aminazin.

I was tied to bed, fed through a tube. They were trying to bring me into a state of mental disability according to a plan. Up to five guards equipped with non-lethal weapons guarded me at mental hospital. Are mentally ill should really be watched like that? It seems to me that it was done on purpose, in order to keep my relatives in fear, to prevent them from any attempts to write complaints, seek advice of human rights activists.

On the eve of 2008, while I was transported to Homel correctional colony Nr 4, I was slowly driven in the paddy wagon past my former office, for me to admire to my heart’s content how neon lights which decorate the stylish building in the centre of our capital.

It was a kind of “farewell present” for me…

Sweet Slavery?

Zara modeling agency, headed by me, was a kind of elite membership club, uniting models who were friends, who had rich lovers in Moscow, which allowed them to visit luxury resorts in winter and in summer, and to organize photo sessions with well-known photographers and taking part in prestigious fashion shows.

One cannot say that a women is sexually free, when she is not free economically. Could models feel moral or physical pain during such trips? Or were they forced by threats, blackmailing and deceit to work to death for crummy salaries? Not in the least, Belarusian models were absolutely free in their choice, everywhere and always. They had an opportunity to take part in prestigious contests, fashion shows, be personally acquainted with designers, music and show business stars, form a different outlook, a sense of style and beauty.

This “slavery” was as sweet as honey for them.

Investigators deceived the women into a belief that they were victims.

They carefully disguised their aims and purposes to build a career by benevolent intentions, they tried to portray directors of modeling agencies as greedy creatures, Valkyries and ghouls, and persuading they should be feared, held in contempt and hated.

Real exploitation is not economic or political one, real exploitation is psychological. Psychological exploitation is a prohibition to be oneself. It is a denial to look at a person as it is, pressure on the person, absence of humanity and blatant human rights violations. It is an absolute victory of evil.

I am a linguist, I graduated from the Linguistic University. It was painful for me to learn that two graduates of our university who worked as interpreters, died in Venezuela.

And we have not killed or injured anyone, but we were sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.

We have not stolen anything, we have not blasted metro, traded in our Motherland.

By the way, most of the key models of Zara agency successfully fled abroad, to Canada, the US, South Africa, Cyprus, where they hid from insistent demands of law enforcing agencies to give testimony against the director of Zara agency.

“I do not consider myself a wronged person,” answered many of them.

7.5 years have passed since then, some of us are still serving the sentence.

Haven’t it been enough of our apologizes for driving second-hand Mercedes cars?

And am still waiting for a belated opening of eyes by Lukashenka, and his realization that the issue of human trafficking had been exaggerated on purpose, it was “hyperbolized” to the degree of absurd, with the aim to receive subsidy from the UN.

We have been deprived of freedom, but no one can deprive us of the right to remember, and I am sure that in 30-40 years we are to be exonerated completely…

Iryna Karayeva

(I consider myself to be unlawfully convicted).

By the way

Ihar Krot, a judge of Minsk city court who presided in the high-profile case related to trafficking in persons, has submitted a notice of resignation recently.

We remind that Krot has been put on the list of persons banned from entering Europe.

Narodnaya Volya’s history file

As it was announced in Minsk city court on April 20, 2007, Iryna Karayeva, a founder of Zara modeling agency, was found guilty of “participation in a criminal group, procuration of women, trafficking in persons carried out by an organized group, committed against obviously underage persons with the aim of sexual exploitation, and also guilty of attempted trafficking in persons.” She was sentenced to 10 years of standard regime penal colony.

Besides, Karayeva is to compensate Br 6 mln for moral damages to the persons affected, and pay more than Br 31 mln to the state.