Slavery in Italy? A DW Documentary

The leader pushes you.

He sees tomatoes on the ground and shouts

Pick them up!

If any are left, he gets angry, pushes you
and slaps you.

He hurts you, he doesn't respect you
and that's slavery.

Slavery, not just exploitation.

Exploitation means a poor salary
but if they push you,

if you're working in the full sun,
if you can't open your mouth,

you have no papers and sleep in ghettos,
then it's slavery.

Modern slavery doesn't need chains.

What happens here is slavery.

Slavery in Italy.

A report by Katrin Sandmann
and Fritz Schapp

Yvan Sagnet uses the term slaves for
the more than 400,000 workers from Africa

and Eastern Europe who work in
Italian agriculture.

This man from Cameroon was one of them.

Today, he fights for their rights and
against a mafioso system of unfair

competition, abuse of power
and exploitationl.

Sañe wants to bring the exploiters
to justice and end

the inhumane living conditions
for these labourers.

These are the typical living
conditions for immigrants.

They use the fireplace for everything
as there's no power, light or water.

Nothing at all.

But they get by; they use the fireplace
to heat and cook with.

This is used as a table.
There isn't even oil.

And these are the plates they eat off.

Look, there are eight mattresses.

40 people sleep here.

See them?

They put 40 people in this room.

Plaster from the ceiling may fall on them
while they sleep

and it's too cold.

There's no glass in the windows.
They cover them with a metal sheet.

The immigrants have to buy

almost everything they need to survive

from intermediaries known as leaders.

They often come from the same countries
as the labourers.

They charge €10 for a rotten mattress.

Italians live in that yellow house.
No foreigners, Italians.

But they get on with the leaders.

It's the only house in the area with
running water and electricity.

People living here have to go there to
charge their mobiles, for example.

Because there's nothing here.

And they charge them 50 cents per charge,
and €1 - €1.50 to have a wash.

It makes me cry. I feel disgusted
when I see there are

people living in these conditions in
21st century Italy.

It's horrible, it's dreadful and
everyone knows it.

Everyone knows it but they don't care
because it's about immigrants.

Immigrants are treated like animals.

They're only wanted to work so

the farmers' and politicians' businesses
make money.

They aren't considered human.

This is Italy, welcome to Italy.

The immigrants who live here are
totally controlled by the leaders

who are organised like a kind of mafia.

When the farmers need labour
in the fields,

They call the intermediaries who abuse
their power

to exploit and control the migrants.

And they can do it because they live
alongside them in the ghettos.

The regions of Apulia and Basilicata
in the south of Italy

are the country's biggest vegetable
producers.

They harvest 30% of Italian tomatoes in
Apulia alone.

The large ghettos are often found in
isolated areas surrounding

the fields of crops.

Cities of misery are growing here.

If we go in, we'll have to record using
a hidden camera. Put the big camera down.

The leaders don't like cameras.

Well, we'd see their illegal schemes.

And the immigrants are ashamed to be seen
living in ghettos.

They would be ashamed to be recorded.

They'd be ashamed if people in their
country saw them like this.

Because whenever they speak with their
parents and friends, they tell them

a totally different story: they're lawyers
office workers.

They lie, simply because they're
ashamed to admit

what their lives are really like.

More than 3,000 people live here during
the harvest.

Most of them are from Africa.

They have been landing on the coasts
of Italy for decades now,

immigrants who Europe has been leaving
Italy to deal with alone for years.

Some have papers, some are illegal.

The Italian government look the other way
because without cheap labour,

the crops would be lost.

There's rubbish everywhere, it attracts
flies and mosquitos.

In these ghettos there's neither
rubbish collection nor laws.

This territory, where the strongest rule,
is dangerous for Yvan.

He suspects death threats come from here.

The leaders who live here know
that he's their most stubborn enemy.

Yvan has spent years collecting proof of
illegal schemes in fields like these.

He's looking for witness
and identifying criminals.

That's why he knows may of the inhabitants
and their stories,

like this man's, from Sudan.

I fled to Italy 20 years ago.

His European dream ended in a hut
where he sells second-hand clothing.

His customers are refugees from
around the world.

Suddenly, a man goes up to Yvan.
He's a leader.

He exaggerates his nervousness, but he
he hurries us to leave.

We want to put a permanent end
to these ghettos.

We demand structures, water, light,
kitchens, decent bedrooms,

and my dream is to achieve all this
with NOCAP.

Rome. Yvan Sagnet lives and works in the
city centre, near the Vatican.

He started NOCAP here in his apartment.

It's a certification system for ethically
produced foods.

NOCAP is based on article 4 of the
universal declaration of human rights,

which says, "Nobody is to be submitted to
slavery or serfdom.

Slavery and slave-handling are
prohibited in all their forms."

NOCAP is an organisation that says "no"
to the leader system.

And it opposes it with a
labelling system.

We put these labels on products
from all the farmers who do not exploit

their workers, after checking that they
respect their labourer's rights.

And we've started a collaboration with a
small farmers' association

called "Altra-Agricultura".

They have 60,000 producers.

So we're starting with a small and
solid baseline.

Yvan's commitment to human rights and
the way he bravely points out and

reports mafioso structures in
agriculture

earnt him a Knighthood from

Italian president Sergio Matarella
in 2017.

It was a great moment in my life.

It was an amazing moment, because
I received recognition from a country

of which I'm not a citizen.

I'm not Italian, at his point I'm still
Cameroonian.

And to receive an Italian award made
me really happy.

[Singing in Italian]

In 2017, Yvan became a father.
It was a year full of happiness.

But it was overshadowed by death threats.

His enemies knew that Yvan was
ready to take them to the supreme court.

Verónica, his wife,
fears the consequences.

[Singing in Italian]

Unfortunately, the threats show how well
he's doing with this work,

so much that he's obstructing the
interests of the powerful.

And naturally, as his family,
this worries us.

Especially when he goes to the places
where those threats come from.

We pray for him so that he achieves his
purpose without getting hurt.

Yvan has shown that he's very brave
and determined,

and he's shown us that is possible to
change things, little by little,

by working hard and making sacrifices.

And he has my support in this battle that
he fights every day.

In 2007, Yvan came to Italy, the country
he'd admired since his youth,

not to fight, but to study.

Everything went well until he failed
an exam

and lost his grant at Turín University.

His desperate search for work took him
to Nardó, in the south,

to the tomato harvest.

Yvan Sagnet came to this farm on
10 July 2011,

and something happened that changed
his live forever.

Today, this young 33 year-old returns
to the outskirts of the place

where, at the time, myriad African workers
were living in bell tents,

under plastic covers or outdoors.

It was incredibly dirty and very hot,

and I asked God, "What is this?
Where have I ended up?"

I'd come from a normal environment
in Turin,

where I lived in a normal house,
a student residence

with a bath, my own room and a bed.

And suddenly I found myself sleeping
outdoors on a mattress.

While he explored the terrain, Yvan
discovered that

there were harvesters here again.

There weren't many, but their conditions
were no better than back then.

After he'd been there three days,
he met a leader called Meki.

He was from Sudan.
He was a big strong guy.

Yvan spend four days in the fields
under Meki's brutal control.

He was paid one euro for every 100 kilos
of tomatoes he harvested.

He earnt a total of 14 euros
on his first day.

He had pay 10 euros of that to Meki
for transport, food and water.

After a fourteen hour day in the heat,
and subjected to beatings,

he had 4 euros left.

That was it. And if you got ill, it would
get even worse.

I remember a fellow who suddenly fainted
because of the sun.

It was too hot. He fell to the ground.

Damn, it was so hard.

I was next to him when he fell and I
asked him what happened, what should I do.

I went for water and poured it over him.

I told the leader he needed to
go to hospital.

But there wasn't one nearby.

The nearest hospital was a long way away.

And the leader answered: "Leave him there.
If you want to take him to hospital,

I'll charge you 50 euros
for the transport.