A Voice for the Voiceless

By R. Renee Yaworsky
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BRASILIA, Brazil—On Monday, 88 more private firms were accused by the Brazilian government of engaging in slave labor, or forcing laborers to live and work in conditions equivalent to slavery.  The Labor Ministry now lists 220 such firms on Brazil’s registry of worker exploitation.

The accused companies will be punished by steep fines and will be unable to obtain credit at public banks or sell their products to government entities.  The firms will be blacklisted this way for at least two years until they demonstrate that they have brought their practices up to code.

Agricultural firms listed on the registry are believed to have forced workers to live and work in dangerous conditions, threatening their safety, hygiene and health.  There have also been allegations that the agricultural workers have been made to work illegally long hours and receive less than adequate pay.

The majority of the workers who have been trapped in slave labor were recruited from the poorest areas of Brazil.  After the laborers agreed to be relocated in promise of a job, they became imprisoned by employers who demanded money for food, rent, and previously unmentioned services.  The workers become imprisoned in debt bondage and have little choice but to do as their employers order.

The recent influx in slave labor in Brazil is the most severe since records on the matter emerged in 2003.  The 220 firms on the updated list include plantations, sugar mills, coal yards, timber businesses, construction companies and textile factories.

The government blacklist is updated every six months and 14 firms were recently dropped because they improved their operations to meet government standards.

Last year, a government task force rescued almost 5,000 slave laborers after conducting 133 raids on suspected farms in Brazil.  According to the United Nations International Labor Organization, there are roughly 12.3 million workers suffering from similar situations throughout the world.

For more information, please see:

EIN News-Brazil Cracks Down on Farm Slave Labor; 88 Firms Accused-5 January 2011

Sify News-Over 200 Brazil firms found treating workers as slaves-5 January 2011

Fox News-Brazil accuses 220 firms of using slave labor-4 January 2011

By Patrick Vanderpool
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BOGOTA, Colombia – Five soldiers, including an Army major and four former soldiers, were charged with murdering three farm laborers and presenting them as rebels killed in combat.  The murders, which occurred in 2002, are just a few of the approximately 2,000 that investigators have uncovered and pinned on Colombian Security Forces.

The murderous scandal, which is known as the “false positives” scandal, has been blamed on a system that offered soldiers and officers the hope of promotions and extra leave time for increasing body counts in the conflict with leftist guerrillas.

According to the Colombian Attorney General’s office, the current case occurred on Dec. 11, 2002, in a rural part of the municipality of Campamento, a northwestern province of Antioquia. On that day, troops under the command of then-Lt. Juan Carlos del Rio Crespo “removed from the cane field where they were going about their daily tasks laborers Alejandro Agudelo Agudelo, Angel Ramiro Agudelo and Gonzalo Agudelo Perez.”

The soldiers later reported that “the deaths of those people as casualties in combat with members of the 26th Front of the FARC,” according to the statement by the Attorney General’s office.  An investigation established that the laborers “were executed when they were totally defenseless” and that the troops planted guns next to their bodies to bolster their argument that the laborers were rebels.

Four of the charged men are currently being held in a military prison while authorities search for the fifth soldier. Since 2008, when the scandal first broke, 272 soldiers have been convicted and 58 have been absolved in similar cases.

For more information, please see:

Latin American Herald Tribune – Five Colombia Soldiers Charged with Murdering Civilians – 3 January 2011

Latin American News Dispatch – Colombian Major and Four Soldiers Accused in “False Positive” Murders – 3 January 2011

Miami Herald – Colombian Soldiers Accused of Killing 3 Civilians – 1 January 2011