BISHKEK -- Meerim and Ajara had just started their first year in university in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, when the two young women stumbled upon an opportunity to make some money on the side.

Ajara saw an ad on Instagram looking for young, attractive women.

"They told her you just needed to exchange messages with people online, show them your underwear, nothing else. And they offered good money," Meerim, 22, told RFE/RL on the condition that we use pseudonyms for her and Ajara.

The two friends began working at one of the dozens of webcam studios in Bishkek, interacting with clients from all over the world who pay them to chat, undress, and often perform sexual acts on camera. And at first, the money was good.

"In the first month I received around $1,000, and Ajara got even more. She got around $3,000. The second month was also well paid. But then it was cut. They started paying us about $600 each," Meerim said.

That’s when the trouble started.

The two friends, Meerim alleges, became victims of blackmail by their employers. Within a year, Ajara had taken her life.

Meerim and Ajara are at the center of an investigation by RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, known locally as Radio Azattyk, into the webcam industry in Kyrgyzstan, which serves as a regional hub in a multibillion-dollar global industry.

The investigation lifts the veil on the abuses -- including blackmail, rape, and doxing -- that young Kyrgyz women are subjected to while trying to make ends meet working for live webcam sites in the Central Asia nation, where, according to the World Bank, nearly one-third of the population lives in poverty.

Radio Azattyk spoke to multiple young women and other sources previously or currently involved in the webcam industry in Kyrgyzstan. The sources include a number of men involved in recruiting women, filming them, and communicating with clients.

All of them agreed to speak only on the condition that their identities remain hidden due to fears of exposure to family and friends.

And many of the women who have suffered abuse fear going to police who, according to several sources, often provide cover for the studios.

"I found several women who said they were afraid of going to the police because the police often extort money from these girls," Aleksandra Titova, a journalist at the Kyrgyz news site Kloop who has reported extensively on Kyrgyzstan’s webcam industry, told Radio Azattyk.

'Find Inexperienced Women'

The global webcam industry generates billions of dollars annually, according to industry players and studies. In Central Asia, Bishkek and neighboring Kazakhstan’s economic capital, Almaty, have emerged as the regional hubs for webcam studios.

Karachach Shakirova, a journalist with the Kyrgyz news site Radar.kg, which works closely with the Kyrgyz Interior Ministry’s press service, estimates that between 4,000 and 5,000 young women in Kyrgyzstan are working for webcam sites.

Some of the women work from home, with the studios providing logistical support and sometimes providing money for their rent. Others work on-site from premises rented in the city by the studios. A single building might house up to 30 young women simultaneously, with some studios providing free room and board for the women, according to Taalai, a former manager and recruiter at a Bishkek studio who agreed to speak to RFE/RL under a pseudonym.

"In the studio where I work, we have 30 girls, but only five make decent money. The main thing is to put the models on salary. Here we have one model, she agreed to a [monthly] salary of $235. But she earns us at least $2,000 a week," said Taalai, who currently works as a cameraman at a webcam studio.

Other industry players in Kyrgyzstan corroborated Taalai’s account, saying most studios take 50-70 percent of the earnings that the women bring in.

Taalai says he prefers to find young women from rural areas.

"You need to find inexperienced women who don't understand anything. You give them a little bit of money, a couple of hundred bucks, and they work," he said.

Taalai said he is increasingly working more with women based either in Almaty or on the outskirts of Moscow. "Bishkek is too small, and it’s already become difficult to find young women ready to work," he said.

For Meerim and Ajara, Kyrgyzstan was dangerously small for their short-lived stints as webcam sex workers.

'She's Bluffing'

Unlike the young women recruited from rural Kyrgyzstan, Meerim and Ajara were not new to Bishkek, but they were in debt and afraid to tell their parents. Their waitressing jobs did not pay enough and the webcam work seemed like an answer.

Meerim described Ajara as "outgoing, charismatic, and lively," and said she moved seamlessly into her new job.

"She had regular customers and I think she was earning more than anyone else [at the studio]. At the time, we didn’t know how the system worked. It turns out that in reality we were earning a lot more money and they were only paying us a salary," Meerim recalled.

When the friends began complaining about their pay cuts around the third month of their employment, the studio administrators allegedly responded by threatening to leak their intimate videos and personal information.

Meerim says a female manager at the studio said she had a phone number for Ajara's boyfriend.

"Ajara is stubborn. She said, ‘She doesn't have his number. She's bluffing.’ I don't know how she did it, but it turned out she had all the contacts from Ajara's phone. She must have downloaded them somehow. And then she sent him several videos on WhatsApp," Meerim recalls.

Attempts to locate and contact the female administrator who Meerim identified by the name Damira were unsuccessful.

Meerim said Ajara and her boyfriend had a falling out and "ended their relationship," and that Ajara was "under huge stress."

"I tried to calm her down, to speak to her. But I was terrified myself that my photos or videos could be leaked. They could be sent to my parents or friends. I deleted all my contacts and accounts: Instagram, Facebook, VKontakte. I even changed my phone and got a new SIM card," she said.

Meerim says that she and her friend did not speak for "a long time" after that.

"Then, when I decided to phone her and met her, I almost couldn't recognize her. She was lost, tired. And then, in the summer…my parents said that Ajara had hanged herself. So, they buried her," Meerim told RFE/RL. "Imagine: She was just 19 years old."

Police Protection

Meerim says she and Ajara felt unable to seek help from the police, fearing exposure.

Kyrgyz police regularly report raids on what they call "porn studios," resulting in small fines for the women and the camera operators present.

Three sources told RFE/RL that the owners of webcam studios in Kyrgyzstan typically enjoy high-level protection.

"It's better if you have cover in the financial police. Because if there is no legal business and the financial police notice transfers to your account, every week $10,000-12,000, then they would immediately start checking," Taalai, the former recruiter for and administrator of a Bishkek studio, told RFE/RL.

The Kyrgyz government disbanded the country’s financial police in March, handing their responsibilities to the Interior Ministry and the State Security Service.

Kyrgyz authorities have opened several criminal cases for blackmail of women working for webcam sites, most of which were settled out of court. Some have resulted in fines or suspended sentences.

Kyrgyzstan’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that "it has not been confirmed that police officers are connected to the work" of webcam studios.

"If such cases are identified, they will be investigated by the Internal Investigations Department. The ministry is obligated to inform the public about the results of such investigations," a ministry spokesman said.

"Webcam studios have predominantly been discovered in the city of Bishkek. The Interior Ministry and other organs are constantly working to identify new studios," the spokesman added.

A key hurdle for webcam workers in Kyrgyzstan is the absence of a legal infrastructure regulating the profession. Raids on webcam studios often result in fines for administrators and the on-camera performers, who are charged with distributing pornography.

Titova, the Kloop journalist who has investigated the Kyrgyz webcam industry, believes the business should be legalized and subject to taxes, thus providing greater oversight and protection for women working in the business.

"But I’d also like to appeal to young women: If someone is blackmailing you, contact journalists, contact the police. Don’t be afraid. If you have protection, you can defend yourselves. Don’t give in to a blackmailer," Titova said.

"As long as he has material in his hands, he will most definitely use it. Emotionally, this is very difficult pressure and it’s not worth suffering in silence," she added.

Telegram Doxing

In recent years, Kyrgyz webcam workers have fallen victim to doxing on the popular encrypted messaging app Telegram.

Titova uncovered multiple Telegram groups where young men try to discover the identities of women who work in the webcam industry, often with the aim of blackmailing them.

There are thousands of men in each group, most of them hidden behind online pseudonyms.

These groups were exposed in a documentary by Kyrgyz filmmaker Aziat Jeksheev.

"In some cases, it's the same people who control the [webcam] business: the people who have access to all the videos and photos, the people who organize the studios. They are leaking material to the Telegram groups to intimidate disobedient women," Jeksheev told RFE/RL.

Jeksheev's film identified Bishkek-based entrepreneur Daniel Ajiev, who was arrested for running a webcam studio in his apartment. Accused of blackmail, he was fined $350 for "making or distributing pornography."

In one case, court records reveal how a man discovered a woman's identity via a Telegram group and used it to blackmail her into having sex with him. He was fined and ordered to do 2 1/2 years of community service. When contacted by RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service, neither the man nor his lawyer agreed to an interview.

"These young men who set up these Telegram groups have really set up a business. It's the business of catching girls from these sites," Titova told RFE/RL.

The Kyrgyz Interior Ministry did not disclose whether law enforcement agencies are monitoring the Telegram groups. It also provided no information about what, if any, measures are being taken to prevent such crimes from being committed.

'Playing With Other People's Lives'

Meerim has been out of the webcam business for more than two years. But she believes that it is a service industry like any other and that its practitioners should not face prosecution, harassment, or abuse.

She says that while she and Ajara got into webcamming "out of stupidity and because we had debts," for many others the work is a matter of life and death.

"There are so many young women whose parents are sick, who have disabled children. They really need the money," Meerim said. "What’s more, they aren’t doing anything bad there. They’re not stealing anything."

Neither their families nor friends to this day know what happened to Meerim and Ajara in the webcam business, Meerim says.

She told RFE/RL that she still monitors Telegram groups under various nicknames.

"I watch these groups all the time and try to write there, too, to persuade people not to publish these photos and videos," she said. "Because they are playing with other people's lives."

Written and translated by Carl Schreck and Ray Furlong based on reporting by Ulanbek Asanaliev and RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service