The six-year-old forced into modern slavery

Nazira Zuptarova tells SBS Small Business Secrets how her family fled Tajikistan's civil war and she ended up as a slave.

Nazira Zuptarova as a small child with her mother in Tajikistan Source: Supplied

Nazira Zuptarova was just six years old when armed soldiers came into the home she shared in Tajikistan with her mother and threatened to kill her baby brother unless they left. They fled to neighbouring Uzbekistan but were not welcomed by family members, and the little girl was forced into slavery, picking cotton.  Her family ended up living in Western Australia, and today, Nazira tells SBS Small Business Secrets that Australians should know that slavery has not gone away, and that cheap items in our shops come on the backs of slave workers on the other side of the world.