Two suspects have been arrested in the southern Italian region of Calabria because the Public Prosecution Service suspects them of burning four migrant workers alive. Report that Italian media Wednesday.
The four victims, three Afghans and a Pakistani, worked as strawberry pickers. The attack took place at a gas station in the village of Amendolara. On images shows two men throwing liquid into a car. Then smoke appears and the men keep the doors of the car closed.
According to the only survivor of the attack, 38-year-old Mohammad Taj Alamyar from Afghanistan, he and the other four passengers were victims of a rogue employer from the criminal circuit. They have not been paid for their work for more than a month. “We had rebelled,” he says against the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “That’s why they set the car on fire.”
Taj Alamyar said he shared a room with the four deceased migrant workers. He himself barely managed to escape from the car through the tailgate. He did sustain burns.
Exploitation
Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL), the largest Italian trade union, speaks of an “indescribable” incident, writes the Italian news agency Ansa. The union called on the government to take action against “the atrocities of daily life that workers, often migrants, experience in our countryside.”
Italian agriculture is notorious for the large-scale exploitation of migrant workers. After previous incidents, the government led by Giorgia Meloni took measures to combat criminal exploitation, including by increasing the number of inspections on farms.
Many migrants still work undeclared and are dependent on their employers for food and housing. “Several mafia branches are active in agriculture and the trade in agricultural products,” Italian labor migration expert Marco Omizzolo previously told reporters. NRC. “Farmers and other employers are in cahoots with human smugglers.”
Also read
‘Widespread exploitation lies behind the horrific death of an Indian farm worker in Italy’