Polish workers freed from 'concentration camp' farm

ITALY: Police in southern Italy have freed 113 Poles from forced labour on a farm investigators compared to a concentration camp.

Italian and Polish officers, who worked together on "Operation Promised Land", said that migrant workers who arrived at the tomato farm in the Puglia region were beaten, raped and forced into prostitution, and some may even have been murdered.

"To call the situation revealed by the carabinieri investigation simply inhuman in no way does it justice," said Italy's national anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso.

"We are talking about conditions similar to those of concentration camps, where people were not only exploited for their work but also kept in a state of slavery."

Polish police said that 16 people had been arrested in Italy - including an Algerian, three Poles and two Ukrainians who ran the labour camp - and nine had been held in Poland, including the owner of a transport firm involved in getting the workers to Italy.

"Those who applied were charged 400 to 800 zlotys (€125-€250) for the journey, plus another €150 when they reached Italy," said Polish police chief Marek Bienkowski.

"The workers were kept in barracks, in appalling sanitary conditions. They were also obliged to pay the costs of their accommodation and food.

"This caused most of them to fall into a spiral of debt. Deprived of freedom, they were watched . . . by armed guards who called themselves 'kapos'," taking their name from Nazi concentration camp guards.

Mr Bienkowski said that the workers - who answered Polish newspaper and internet adverts promising steady agricultural work - were raped, beaten, set upon by guard dogs, threatened with guns and forced into prostitution.

"Work in inhuman conditions led some of the workers to suicide. I cannot rule out that some deaths could also have been the result of murder and exhaustion," he added.

Four deaths which were apparently suicides are being investigated by the authorities.

Italian police said that the Poles were forced to work for up to 15 hours a day for between €2 and €5 per hour. They were fed little more than bread and water, slept on the floor and were forced to pay a €20 fine if they fell ill.

Polish media reported that the camp had operated for two years, and probably used more than 1,000 labourers; 700 more Poles were expected to arrive there in the coming months.

Applicants for the work were told to make their way to Italy, at their own expense, on certain buses.

During the trip, many had their passports taken away, and they were met on arrival by members of the criminal gang which ran the farm.

Hundreds of thousands of Poles head west each year, escaping 16 per cent unemployment, which is the highest in the EU; at least 100,000 people from Poland have registered to work in Ireland in the last two years.

In the wake of "Operation Promised Land", Polish interior minister Ludwik Dorn announced plans for an education campaign to highlight the dangers of people-trafficking.

"The news that in the 21st century, in a European country, labour camps were being operated by criminals should play a preventative role here in Poland," he said.

The plight of migrant workers in southern Italy came to light in Poland last year when police freed 105 people from another similar farm in the same area.

One man who returned from there last year spoke to the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza about his experience.

"The conditions were horrendous," said Wojtek (26). "And the guards were complete bandits, tattooed everywhere, even on their faces.

"Normal people who went there to work were humiliated and beaten, so no one really made any trouble."