Calabria: four farm workers killed and burnt, two Pakistanis detained
Two Pakistani citizens have been arrested for the murder of four agricultural workers in Calabria. The migrants, locked in a van, are reported to have been set alight after demanding payment of their wages. A sole survivor has recounted the horror.
Calabria: four farm workers killed and burnt, two Pakistanis detained
Two Pakistani citizens have been arrested on suspicion of murdering four agricultural workers in southern Italy. The suspects are reported to have locked the victims in a van and set the vehicle alight.
The incident occurred in Calabria. The victims reportedly included three Afghans and one Pakistani. The suspects are said to have demanded money for transport to the fields, a sum that the workers were unable to pay. According to the account of the survivor, the two men poured petrol into the vehicle and threw an incendiary object, causing the deaths of the four migrants in the resulting fire.
The survivor reported that he and his companions had repeatedly requested payment for their day's work in the strawberry fields between Calabria and Basilicata, but had never received any compensation. "They gave us food and a place to sleep, but never money," he stated. He also spoke of a "large Pakistani mafia" in the agricultural sector, claiming that the two arrested men had threatened him with knives and guns to force him to work.
The Bishop of Cassano allo Ionio, Francesco Savino, strongly condemned the exploitation of foreign workers. "Enough with the disastrous habit of considering it normal that people who have arrived from far away reap, work, live and die here like bodies without history," he stated.
Trade union organisations spoke of "unspeakable horror". The CGIL has urged the authorities to take more decisive measures "to combat the daily inhumanity that many workers, often migrants, suffer in our fields".
According to CGIL estimates, up to 230,000 people work in the agricultural sector without a contract, more than a quarter of Italian seasonal farm workers. The phenomenon of caporalato, an illegal form of recruiting foreign labour through intermediaries, is particularly widespread in southern Italy. Italian law provides for up to six years imprisonment for those who exploit undeclared workers in the fields, but organisations point to insufficient inspection.
Source: Google News AT — Crime (de)