Slavery in Italy? A DW Documentary

Yvan Sagnet, from Camaroon, fights against exploitation in the fields of Italy. He worked under conditions of slavery. Today, he fights for migrants' rights and takes the criminal intermediaries to court.

The foreman pushes you.

He sees tomatoes on the ground
and screams,

"Pick them up!"

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

He hurts you, he doesn't respect you.
That is slavery.

Slavery, not just exploitation.

Exploitation is unfair wages, but if they
push you,

if you work in the full sun,
if you can't speak out,

you don't have papers and you sleep in
ghettos - that's slavery.

Modern day slavery does not require
chains.

What is happening here is slavery.

Slavery in Italy

A report by
Katrin Sandmann and Fritz Schapp

Yvan Sagnet refers to the over 400,000
african and eastern-workers

that work in the Italian agriculture
industry as slaves.

This man from Cameroon used to be
one of them.

Today, I fight for their rights
against mafia-like unfair competition,

abuse of power and exploitation

Sañe wants to send the exploiters
to prison and put an end

to the inhumane living condiitons
of these workers.

These are typical living conditions
for the immigrants.

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

Nothing at all.

But they improvise; they use the fireplace
to heat and cook.

This is used as a table.
There's not even any oil.

And these are the plates they eat off.

Look, there are eight mattresses.

40 people may sleep here.

See them?

They put 40 people in this room.

Plaster may fall on them as
they sleep

and it's too cold.

There's no glass in the windows. They're
covered with a metal sheet.

The immigrants have to buy

almost everything they need to survive

from intermediaries called foremen.

Sometimes they come from the same
countries as the workers.

For a rotten mattress, they ask
for 10 euros.

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

But they get on with the foremen.

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

The ones who live here have to go there
to charge their phones, for example.

Because there's nothing here.

And they charge 50 cents for each charge
and €1 or €1.50 to have a wash.

It makes me cry. I am so disgusted
when I see that there are

people who have to live 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.

They treat immigrants like animals.

They only want them to work so

the farmers' and politicians' businesses
make money.

They aren't considered human.

This is Italy, welcome to Italy.

The immigrants that live here are totally
controlled by the foremen

who are organised like a kind of mafia.

When the farmers need labour
for 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.

30% of Italian tomatoes are harvested
in Apulia alone.

The large ghettos are often found
in the isolated areas

which surround the fields.

Cities of misery grow there.

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

The foremen don't like camaras.

They'd show their illegal business.

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

They are ashamed to be recorded.

They'd be ashamed if peopleback home
could see them like this.

Because every time they speak to friends
and family, they tell a completely

different story, where they are lawyers
or work in an office.

They lie simply because they're ashamed
to admit

what their life is really like.

During the harvest, more than
3,000 people live here.

Most of them are from Africa.

They are people who arrived on the
coasts of Italy decades ago,

the immigrants who Europe has been
abandoning to Italy for years.

Some have papers. Others are illegal.

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

the harvests would go to waste.

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

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

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

He suspects this is where the
death threats are coming from.

The foremen who live here know
that he's their most determined enemy.

Yvan has spent years gathering proof of
their illegal behaviour in these fields.

He's looking for witnesses and
identifying criminals.

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

like the one of this man from Sudan.

He fled to Italy 20 years ago.

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

His customers are refugees from
all around the world.

Suddenly a man approaches Yvan.
He's a foreman.

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

We want to put an end to these ghettos
once and for all.

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

and my dream is to achieve all this
with NOCAP.

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

Here in his apartment, he founded NOCAP,

a certification system for
ethically-produced food.

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

which says "No one shall be held
in slavery or servitude;

slavery and the slave trade shall be
prohibited in all their forms."

NOCAP is an organisation that says "no"
to the foreman system,

and opposes it with a labelling system.

We put these labels on products from all
the farmers who don't exploit

their workers, after checking that
they respect the workers' rights.

We have started a collaboration with
an association of small farmers

called "Altra-Agricultura".

There are sixty thousand producers.

That's how we've started with a small
and solid base.

Yvan's commitment to human rights and
his bravery when it comes to calling out

and reporting the mafioso structures
in agriculture

is valued by the Italian president,

Sergio Matarella, who awarded him a
a knighthood 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 don't have citizenship.

I'm not Italian, I'm still Camaroonian
at the moment.

And receiving an award from Italy made
me so happy.

[Singing in Italian]

In 2017, Yvan is a father. It's a year
full of happiness.

But it is overshadowed by death threats.

His enemies know that Yvan is ready to
take them to the supreme court.

Verónica, his wife,
fears the consequences.

[Singing in Italian]

Unfortunately, the death threats indicate
how well he's doing his job,

how much he's obstructing the
interests of the powerful.

And naturally, as his family,
that worries us.

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

We pray that he can achieve
what he wants without coming to harm.

Yvan has proved that he's very brave
and tenacious,

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

by working hard and making sacrifices.

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

In 2017, Yvan arrived in Italy,
the country he'd admired since childhood,

not to fight, but to study.

It was all going well until he failed
an exam

and lost his grant at Turin University.

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

to the tomato harvest.

Yvan Sagnet arrived at this station on
10 July 2011,

and something happened that changed
his life forever.

Today, this 33 year-old is returning
to the outskirts of the place

where, at the time, there were thousands
of African workers in dome tents,

under plastic covers or outdoors.

This was incredibly dirty and
it was very hot,

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

I'd been living in a normal environment
in Turin,

where I was living in normal house,
a student residence

with a bath, my own room, a bed.

And suddenly I found myself in a place
sleeping on a mattress outdoors.

While exploring the terrain, Yvan
discovers that

there are harvest workers here again.

There aren't many, but their conditions
are no better than back then.

Three days after he arrived, he met
a foreman called Meki.

He was from Sudan. A big strong guy.

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

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

He earnt a total of 14 kilos on day one.

From that, he had to pay 10 to Meki for
transport, food and water.

After a 14-hour day under the hot sun
and being beaten,

he was left with four euros.

That's it. And it would be even worse
if you got ill.

I remember a co-worker who fainted
suddenly because of the sun.

It was too hot. He fell to the floor.

Damn, it was really hard.

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

I went to find water and
poured it on him.

I told the foreman he needed to go
to hospital.

But there wasn't one nearby.

The nearest hospital was a long way away.

And the foreman answered: "Leave him.
If you want him to go to hospital,

I'll charge you 50 euros
for the transport."

That isn't even exploitation.
It's slavery.

The man barely survived the collapse
in the field.

I worked for five days and on the fifth,
we said "Enough. We're exhausted.

We want a contract. We want our
rights to be recognised.

We're fed up of being
treated like slaves."

Yvan called for a strike, the first
among the workers.

The men from the ghetto follow him.

The local TV channel, Telerama, reported
on the event.

The death threats made Yvan flee,
but his indignation made him return.

When three months later, the harvest was
in danger of rotting,

the farmers gave up and offered more
money and work contracts.

The govenment of Rome passed a law
against the brutal foreman system.

Shortly afterwards, Yvan brough the first
case against owners and supervisors.

Yvan has dedicated his life to the fight
for human rights,

and today he's fighting on several fronts:
In industrial zones,

in the fields, in the courts, and
increasingly at the negotiation tables.

Here in Basilicata, he's meeting with
some farmers.

And he needs speakers from among the

workers' direct employers.

The meeting was organised by Yvan's
main ally,

the trade unionist Gianni Fabris.

The production of fruit and vegetables
in Italy is on the verge of disaster.

Our products are subjected to
"price dumping".

The sellers tell the farmers
"I will pay the same

for your peaches as I pay for those
from Morocco or Turkey.

They are cheaper than yours. If you
want to sell them, that's the price."

This is the reality in the
Italian countryside.

The food industry corporations
keep the system as it is.

They lower the prices to the minimum,
leaving no margin for the farmers to pay

the workers, meaning the system dictates
they have to exploit their workers.

Yvan is trying to find a solution with
farmers and trade unions.

We need to raise awareness
and ask consumers

to take more social responsibility.

The consumer needs to be aware that for
every kilo of tomatoes they buy,

there is a job.

A job that exploits workers, or one that

is ethically sound.

If they don't rethink it, we're dead.

A few days later, Yvan gets a message that
cheers him up.

An Italian supermarket chain offered
him a first deal.

They committed to buying NOCAP products,

for a value of up to a million euros
for the first consigment.

A great incentive for all those who
want to work with Yvan.

Yvan shows us how the NOCAP
system works in Graziano.

Here, the farmer picks up the workers
himself and doesn't leave transport

in the hands of the intermediaries.

The vans establish the power
of the foreman.

They take the workers to the fields.

There is no public transport.

This means the foremen are in charge of
transporting them and abuse the situation.

The foremen put up to 30 people
in one vehicle with a maximum

of 8 passengers permitted.

I can assure you that a journey in those
overloaded vans is horrible.

Most of them have no window because
the foremen don't want the police to see

how many people they're carrying.

There's almost no air, and there
are deaths every year.

In August 2008, two totally packed vans

crashed in a few days.

16 African workers died.

I will do it differently. These lads
are workers who've come here

in a normal vehicle.

They haven't had to pay for transport.

As you can see, their clothes are white.
They're working clothes.

They also wear protective
masks and gloves.

We take care of occupational safety.

Before starting work here, everyone
signs a work contract.

And the salary complies
with the law.

In this field, they're going to pick the
last tomatoes of the season.

One of the workers, Tómas, from Ghana,
agrees to talk for a moment.

We don't usually have a contract, because
in Europe and Italy, you need

permits and contracts to find
a decent job.

That means that often we don't
leave the ghettos.

You believe we're bad people or that we're
not human beings.

Bur we are people, with a
different skin colour.

We have blood in our veins. We're all one.
We're all human.

The man in whose fields Tómas and
the others are working thinks the same.

Giuseppe Viniola's family have been
growing organic vegetables for 30 years.

Viniola signs a contract with the workers.
Like an increasing amount of farmers,

he's trying to leave behind the system
which, due to extreme price pressure,

makes him an exploiter.

I think the foreman system is the worst
possible error,

because it means you employ a workforce
which you are ultimately exploiting.

The tomato harvest is very hard so

it's essential to recognise the value
of their work.

That's why it's important to sign
contracts and protect the workers.

For the tomato harvest, we pay
€5 net per hour plus bonuses.

That's double the amount paid by
foreman systems.

We must change the system from the roots
up for the tomato harvest.

There are great difficulties and it's
extremely hard to fight

against those prices.

An Italian trade unionist worked out what
needs to happen to solve this.

If the large commercial chains were to pay
the farmers,

just two cents more per kilo of tomatoes,
they would have 235 million euros

of additional turnover.

This would allow them to provide the
workers with dignified

accomodation and working conditions.

And the problem with the foremen
would be resolved.

The end of October.
Lecce, in the south of Italy.

Yvan's battle against the leaders and
producers began five years ago.

This is where he had his biggest success.
A conviction in the first instance.

But now the court could also be
the setting for his worst defeat.

The appeal process begins today.

At the first hearing, nine foremen
were sentenced to 11 years in prison.

They were declared guilty of slavery;
nine foremen and

three Italian farmers were sentenced.

To begin with, about 50 of us testified
against those who exploited us

to the police.

We reported them all by name.

Today, there are only eight left
who are brave enough to testify.

I am the main witness.

Their enemies, sitting on the
accused bench,

defend themselves with
every means possible.

The farmers have a team of
expensive lawyers.

Yvan isn't happy.

"They all exploit workers.

I am one of their victims and I
stand by my statement.

If the conviction were confirmed
at the end of the appeal,

it would be an extraordinary success for
Yvan Sagnet,

although for now, it would only
be symbolic.

This process hasn't changed
the working conditions

of the workers in the fields.

Of course, the foreman system still
rules all over Italy.

And the bad living conditions of the
people in the ghettos are the same,

they still have no water or light.

I was always aware that this process
wouldn't be enough to change everything.

However, Yvan Sagnet believes that
the process is a milestone.

It's worth fighting. We live in a world
where you have to fight for your rights,

because if you don't fight,
nothing will ever change.

Change will only be achieved by fighting,
and we're ready.

April 2019:
The first sentence was overturned,

The accused were acquitted,
Yvan Sagnet will appeal against this.