Slaves in Italy? | DW Documentary

look octopus the kappa rally pushes you he says oh you've left some Tomatoes there he shouts at you pick them up pick them up if anything's left he's not happy he shoves you and slaps you in the face he hurts you he has no respect for you and that is slavery slavery not just exploitation so exploitation is something like poor pay but when they push you when you have to work in the burning Sun and have no say no papers and you sleep in the ghettos all that is slavery modern slavery slavery doesn't require change no slavery is what's happening here this is slavery [Music] Ivonne Sonia calls them slaves for hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers from Africa and Eastern Europe on fields in Italy Yvonne who comes from Cameroon was once one of them today he fights for their rights and against a mafia style system of dumping prices abuse of power and exploitation Yvonne wants to bring the people who profit from that system behind bars and end the farmworkers inhumane living conditions this is typical housing for the immigrants they use the fireplace for all kinds of things because there's no electricity no light no running water nothing but they know how to help themselves they use this for heating and cooking here's the table here's oil and the plates they eat off of look here are eight mattresses oh I see yeah maybe 40 people can sleep here 40 people you've seen it this is a typical house for 40 people speak the common person [Music] Wow sometimes plaster from the ceiling falls on them when they sleep it's much too cold here there are no windows they close up the openings with sheet metal the migrant workers have to buy all basic amenities from the criminal gang masters called the Kappa rally often they come from the same countries as the foreign workers for a rotten mattress they'll demand 10 euros da la maison in that yellow house over there are Italians Italian not foreigners Italians is Italian they do business with the copper alley it's the only house around here with running water and electricity the people have to go over there to charge their mobile phones because there's no electricity here they'll take 50 cents for charging a phone and to wash yourself over there it costs 2 euro or your and a half it makes me want to cry I feel disgust and hatred when I see human beings living under these conditions today in the 21st century in Italy it's despicable despicable and the whole world knows about it everyone knows about it but they don't care because these are migrants the migrants are treated like animals they are supposed to work to boost the business of the farmers and politicians but no one sees them as people such as Sonny Don Giovanni that's Italy welcome to Italy sesame gray the migrants who live in the camps are completely controlled by the people known as Kapur alie kondeh Beta Kappa wake up or are there a kind of mafia when the farmers need workers for the fields they call the copper alley on the phone alley abused this position of power to exploit and control the immigrants and they live side by side with them in their the Apulia and Basilicata regions of southern italy are known as the country's vegetable gardens Apulia alone produces 1/3 of Italy's tomato harvest in the remote areas around the fields we find the so called ghettos entire shanty towns have grown up here while it also sure we'll need a hidden camera in the fields put down your big camera lekha puerile nimble Polly chimera Bhaskar sir the copper alley don't want cameras to be fair more because that would mean people could see their illegal business Liz immigrate the immigrants don't like them because they don't want to be seen in the ghettos they're ashamed of being filmed and that someone in their home countries in Africa might see them when they talk with their parents or friends in Africa they tell them a very different story that their lawyers are working in office they lie because they're ashamed to admit that they live under these conditions the gvv Darcy condition more than 3000 people live here during the harvest most are Africans people who have been arriving on Italy's shores for the past decades and who Italy feels it's been left to deal with without help from Europe many of the farmhands are undocumented the government turns a blind eye without these low-wage workers produce would end up rotting in the fields there's all this garbage everywhere there are mosquitoes and flies and it stinks these camps have no sanitation they are lawless places that might pose a personal risk to live on he believes that the death threats he receives originated here the kappa rally who live here know him as a tenacious opponent for years he has been going to can select these to gather evidence of the gang masters illegal activities he seeks out eyewitnesses identifies perpetrators he knows many of the residents and their stories like this man from Sudan who fled to Italy around 20 years ago hello [Applause] his dream of a better life ended in this shack where he sells used clothes his customers are refugees from around the world in front of the store a man suddenly approaches Yvonne knows him as a copper alley for a while he hides his anxiety but then asks us to end the visit quickly we want an end to these ghettos we want infrastructure water light kitchens decent sleeping arrangements and my dream is to achieve that with the no cop organization lhasa city new kaplan even lives and works in rome not far from the Vatican [Music] here in his apartment he founded no cup it's a system that certifies produce farmed under ethically acceptable conditions no cop is based on article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which says no one shall be held in slavery or servitude slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms no cop is an organization that says no to the cop or a lotto system of gang masters it works with a system of labels so Cheney GK will put these labels on all the products from farmers who don't exploit their workers we will monitor to ensure that the rights of the farm workers are respected and we have formed a partnership with the Union of small farmers called ultra Greek al-tohra they have around 60,000 farmers in their association so we're starting out with a good little base for voting between bars in 2017 Ivonne Sonia was made a knight of Italy's Order of Merit he was awarded the honor by Italian president sergio mattarella for his commitment to human rights and his efforts to expose mafia-like structures in farming that was a grandiose moment in my life a unique moment because I received this honor from a country that was not my own I'm not Italian I'm Cameroonian for the moment and receiving this prize from a country that is not my own makes me very happy in 2017 a van also became a father it was a good year but it was overshadowed by death threats his enemies knew that Ivonne was determined to take them to court to the highest court in the country if need be the fear weighs heavily on his wife Veronica these threats are unfortunately a sign of how well he's doing his work how much he's disturbing the interests of the big players and that's very disturbing to us as a family especially when he goes back to the places where these threats are coming from we pray for him we pray that he will reach his goal without harm Yvan has shown that he's very brave and very obstinate and he's demonstrated that change is possible slowly through hard work and the sacrifices he makes I support him every day in this battle that he fights back in 2007 Yvonne came to Italy not to fight but to study he'd been fascinated by the country since his youth it all went well until he failed an exam and lost his scholarship at his university in Turin he needed cash and his search for work took him to nada in the south of the country to harvest tomatoes he arrived this train station on July 10th 2011 what he experienced then changed his life forever today his return to the site on the edge of town where back then some 1000 workers from Africa were living in tents under plastic tarps or out in the open see they're not what we saw it was unbelievably filthy and hot here and I asked the good Lord where have I ended up here walk even it at you I'd come from a completely different context in Turin there I lived in a decent house a student dormitory with a toilet my own room a bed and suddenly I found myself here sleeping on a mattress on the ground [Music] as he takes us across the property Yvonne discovers that farm workers are living here again [Music] there are not many of them but the conditions are hardly better than they were when he was here [Music] three days after I arrived I encountered a capo dolly who called himself makey he was from Sudan he was a big strong guy called makey makey for the next four days Yvan worked on the field brutally supervised by Micky he was paid three and a half euros for a 350 kilo crate of tomatoes on the first day he managed to pick four crates that made 14 euros he had to pay ten of them to Micky for transport food and water so after a 14-hour day in the heat and with beatings he made four euros signal that's how it was in my lot and if you got sick I remember one made of mine he fell down just like that the Sun was too strong he just collapsed him that was hard when he fell I went over to him and asked him what was wrong I got some water and trickled it on him then I told the copper dolly he has to go to the hospital but there wasn't one nearby because the hospital was far away Luca Paolini listened and the copper dolly said leave him there if he goes to the hospital you'll have to pay 50 euros for the transport that's not exploitation anymore for me that's slavery a new slavery the man barely survived his collapse on the field the tracing I worked for five days and on the fifth day we said enough we are angry enough is enough we want contracts we want our rights to be respected we are tired of being treated like slaves Yvonne helped organize a strike the first large-scale uprising among seasonal farm workers in Italy the men from the ghetto joined it tell her Amma a local broadcaster reported on it then the death threats came and Yvonne fled but his anger brought him back again after nearly three months the harvest was starting to rot on the fields the farmers gave in and offered higher pay and labor contracts the government in Rome passed a law against the brutal Caporal ato system and soon after the first trial of farmers and gang masters began with advanced involvement [Music] his fight for Human Rights has now become a full-time occupation it's a fight on many fronts in production halls on the fields in court and increasingly at negotiating tables here in basilicata he's meeting with some farmers he'd like to have as partners as the direct employers of the farmhands the meeting was arranged by Yvonne's closest ally trade union leader Gianni Fabrice siamo Italian fruit and vegetable production is hovering on the brink our products are subject to price dumping the retailer's say to the farmers we'll pay you the same price for your peaches as we pay for peaches from Morocco or Turkey they're much cheaper than yours you want to sell that's the price that's the reality of farming in Italy system here the system is kept alive by the big companies in the food industry sector Claire pushing down the prices to rock-bottom so that the farmers have no margin to maneuver so they are forced to exploit their workers Yvonne is working with farmers and trade unionists to find a better way no the memo about it we have to raise people's consciousness and beg the consumers to have more social responsibility consumers have to realize that behind the kilo of tomatoes that they buy is work work in which people are being exploited which is ethically correct and if this rethink doesn't happen we are dead a few days later Livan receives a message that gives him a boost an Italian supermarket chain offers him his first deal it will take an initial batch of no cap products worth up to a million euros in its assortment that will make it attractive for farmers to work with even in his organization in the town of Grasse on Oh LaVon shows how the no-cut system works here a farmer picks up his workers himself rather than leaving the transport to the criminal labor brokers [Music] Sasaki fella falls this is what gives the copper alley their power that's how they bring their workers to the fields there's no public transportation so if the copper alley who take care of their transport and abuse them the gang masters pack up to 30 people into a van that is authorized to hold a maximum of eight travelling in those overfilled vans is terrible most of them don't have any windows because the copper dolly don't want the police to see that they're carrying 20 to 25 people so inside there's hardly any air there are deaths every year within the space of two days in August 2018 two separate crashes of overfilled vans claimed the lives of 15 African workers I want it to be different these guys these workers came here in a normal vehicle they didn't pay anything for the transport as you can see their clothing is white it's work clothes and money Moscow they also have protective masks and gloves to protect their hands Nemo we're taking care of safety in the workplace before anyone starts working here he gets a contract and the pay is in accordance with legal requirements the last Tomatoes of the season are being picked on this field one of the workers Thomas from Ghana agrees to talk with us briefly we don't have contracts worked on the contract so we can work because and Europe or Italy if you don't have work contract or work permits you can't work so we always income you think I'm a bad person or I think a month I'm not a human being that's I mean one been different skin back and read back blood is the same thing so oh we are one defend tellus one one one people the man on whose fields Thomas and the others are working also sees it that way Josep even Yanis family has been growing organic vegetables here for 30 years hey guys just picked the red tomatoes just the really red ones [Music] giuseppe vin Yanis workers have contracts he's one of a growing number of farmers who want to break out of a system of extreme price pressure that's turning them into perpetrators for me the capital r2 system is the worst mistake in existence since you're using a labor force that's being fundamentally exploited harvesting Tomatoes is very exhausting and so this labor should be accorded a proper value the reason why it's important to make contracts and protect the workers for the tomato harvest we pay five euros net per hour plus social contributions that's twice as much as in the capital Otto system they're clapping the entire system of the tomato harvest needs to change the battle against these prices is extremely tough there are big difficulties an Italian trade union has calculated what a solution might look like if the big retail chains paid the farmers just 2 cents more per kilogram of tomatoes they would have 235 million euros more income with that they could set up humane housing and working conditions for the farm workers and the problem with the kappa rally would vanish on its own it's late October 2018 in letcher in southern Italy Yvonne's lawsuit against gang masters and exploitative farmers has been going on for five years in this court he celebrated a great triumph the exploiters were convicted in the first trial but now their appeal could end in a dramatic defeat today we are in appeals proceedings in the first trial nine kappa rally were sentenced to 11 years in jail they were convicted of scurvy - in Italian that is of enslavement 9 kappa rally and three Italian farmers were convicted who's a chore would be Parkinson at the start we were around 50 people who went to the police to press charges we named the names of all those who'd exploited us today there are just eight of us with that courage I and the main witness more discipline the other side seated here in the dock have been defending themselves with all available means the farmers have shown up within a murder of expensive lawyers but van has been steadfast all those men are guilty of abusing workers I was a victim of that and I denounced it if the appeals court were to uphold the guilty verdict it would be a remarkable success for a van albeit a symbolic one in Eclair Kosuke say it's clear that this trial has not changed the working conditions for the farmhands in the fields the copper a lotto system is still in place everywhere in Italy and the terrible living conditions of the people in the ghettos without water or light are still there I knew that this trial would not change all that nonetheless Yvonne Sagnier sees the trial as a milestone [Music] servile appendage suebob it's worth fighting we're living in a world where you have to fight if you need a solution if you don't fight nothing will change things will only change if you fight we are prepared so much news [Music] you

Channel: DW Documentary

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Keywords: Documentary, documentaries, DW documentary, DW documentary 2019, full documentary, documentary 2019, DW, Deutsche Welle, deutsche welle documentary, dw 2019, slavery, cameroon, farmworker, eastern europe, harvest, ghetto, Caporale, strike, workers rights, NoCap, working conditions, farm workers documentary, farmworker justice, slavery documentary 2019, gangmaster, tomato harvest

Id: ckSrlCmX_Cg

Length: 28min 26sec (1706 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2019