By Angela Giuffrida | The Guardian | Italy |
Laura Hardeep Kaur was in her office when she received a photo via WhatsApp of a severed arm placed in a crate used for collecting fruit and vegetables.
The trade unionist was horrified but didn’t hesitate to get into her car and drive to an address 20 minutes away in Castelverde, a hamlet in the province of Latina, about 30 miles from Rome.
Kaur described a scene she said she would never forget. Medics were trying to stabilise Satnam Singh, a 31-year-old labourer from India, who was bleeding profusely after being crushed by a machine on the farm where he had been working. He had lost his right arm in the accident and suffered injuries to his legs.
Instead of taking Satnam to hospital, his employer, Antonello Lovato, allegedly left him on the street outside his home, his arm in the black crate beside him, and fled, ignoring pleas for help from Satnam’s partner.
Satnam was transported by air ambulance to a hospital in Rome, where he died two days later. Medics said if he had been taken to hospital straight away, he would probably have survived. Lovato was arrested this month on charges of murder.
“Satnam was dumped as if he was a commodity,” Kaur, who is general secretary of the Frosinone-Latina branch of the agriculture workers’ union Flai-Cgil, told the Observer.
“I have come across plenty of tragic cases among farm labourers here… there are workers who have been beaten by their employers and reduced to slavery. There have been suicides. But until Satnam, I had never heard of a case so cruel.”
Satnam’s death has put the spotlight on the rampant exploitation of workers on Italian farms, facilitated by flaws in immigration and labour law which for more than four decades have enabled a criminal system known as caporalato – a lucrative, tightly run network of gangmasters who illegally recruit poorly paid labourers – to flourish.
The Cgil, Italy’s largest trade union, estimates that as many as 230,000 people – more than a quarter of agricultural workers – do not have a formal employment contract. About 20% are Italian, while 55,000 are women, some of whom have been victims of rape. Meanwhile, a report in March by the analysts Moody’s found that Italy persistently had the highest incidence of modern-day slavery in Europe – approximately 2,000 incidents over five years since 2018.
Satnam earned €5 an hour to work long, gruelling days on a farm in an area of Latina known as the Agro Pontino, a stretch of former marshland that extends towards beach resorts along the Mediterranean coast. The area, well known for its watermelons, kiwis, artichokes and courgettes, which are sold across Italy and beyond, hosts the second largest concentration of farms in the country.
RELATED STORY:
(Asia Samachar, x 2024)
ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs / Punjabis in Southeast Asia and beyond. You can leave your comments at our website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We will delete comments we deem offensive or potentially libelous. You can reach us via WhatsApp +6017-335-1399 or email: asia.samachar@gmail.com. For obituary announcements, click here
