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First, we want to remind you what the abuses denounced by President
Cardoso consist of. Slave labour is characterised by the exercise
of physical control over the worker. The main mechanisms of enslavement
in Brazil are debt bondage the incarceration of workers on estates
until they can pay off debts, in the knowledge that these are unlikely
to be repaid - combined with a threat of violence against those
who try to escape. In a country where 20 per cent of the population
live in absolute poverty, workers from areas hit by recession or
drought are enticed into accepting verbal contracts on the basis
of fraudulent promises of well paid work. They are then loaded into
trucks, and transported thousands of miles, to work on estates in
isolated parts of Pará and other Amazonian states.
The recruitment is done by a gato (literally "cat"), the
name by which the intermediary who organises the recruitment of
workers is known. The debts are incurred by making workers pay for
all costs involved in transporting them to the estates, a charge
about which the workers are not given prior information. They are
not informed that they will not receive cash-in-hand as wages (in
contravention of labour laws); nor that the cost of tools will be
docked from their pay; nor about the inflated prices charged for
food at the store on the estate, the only place they can buy anything.
Housing conditions can only be described as inhuman, with rent deducted
from their wages. Armed guards surround the work sites and accommodation
areas, and workers' identity papers and other official documents
are confiscated illegally. As time passes, and as the workers' debts
increase, they realise they are in effect prisoners, who can be
held as long as their labour is needed.
It is difficult to estimate the number of slave labourers involved.
In 1995 some 26,000 cases were reported to Brazil's Pastoral Land
Commission. The following year the number reported was down to 2,487.
However, cases are only counted in these statistics if information
becomes available - usually if a worker escapes and dares to alert
the authorities or non-governmental organisations.
Let me describe some of the cases which have come up over the past
year.
In August 1997 a young boy named Sebastião fled from Flor da
Mata estate in Pará state belonging to Luiz Pereira Martins,
an owner of several other estates, who had previously been investigated
and denounced by the authorities for practising slave labour. Sebastião
guided a special inspection team and federal police agents to the
estate, where 220 enslaved workers were rescued, among them 30 minors
and 15 women. Several months later, the government announced that
Flor da Mata was to be compulsorily purchased, to punish the owner
for allowing slave labour to be used on his land. In Portuguese
this process is known as "desapropriação", which sounds like the
English term "expropriation". However, in practice Brazilian land
owners who are "disappropriated", usually for purposes of land reform,
are paid the going market rate for their land.
In September 1997 the police at Goianésia, Pará, were anonymously
informed that the remains of dead bodies had been disposed of in
eight wells on an estate. Following a police search decomposing
remains, believed to be those of slave workers, were discovered.
Other traces of the practice of slave labour were found in the estate.
The former owner of the estate is the main suspect of the crimes
and was officially accused of murder by the police.
In March 1998, rural workers contacted the Pastoral Land Commission
to report the existence of slave labour in the state of Minas Gerais.
Out of an initial group of 46 workers, 20 had already managed to
leave the estate where they had been guarded by gunmen but 26 others
were reportedly being forced to stay because of their unpaid debts.
Government Initiatives Against Slavery
Next, I want to summarise the main steps taken against slavery by
the authorities since 1995. In 1995 President Cardoso created an
inter-ministerial task force known as GERTRAF - the Executive Group
for the Repression of Forced Labour. The President also announced
that the government would not provide any more loans, subsidies,
or rollover of outstanding debts to farms or companies found to
employ forced labour and that they would be ineligible to bid for
public contracts. Within this new framework the Ministry of Labour's
Secretariat for Labour and Co-ordination of Land Inspection (SEFIT)
set up a mobile team to carry out inspections wherever slavery was
reported in the country. It is thus a centrally-based investigation
team, led by a senior procurator in the Ministry of Labour. An important
development is the use of federal law enforcement officers for inspections,
which prevents landowners from relying on their links with local
police and local labour inspectors in order to get advance warning
of inspections.
In 1996 and 1997 the mobile team was very active in the southern
part of Pará state. In 1997 the team made five inspections or "raids"
and identified a total of 455 workers being held as slaves in this
area alone. The owners and the managers of the estates concerned
have subsequently been charged with using slave labour. The estate
on which the largest number of enslaved workers was found was Flor
da Mata.
The SEFIT mobile team has undoubtedly been a success and deserves
praise. However, the very need for its existence - a central inspection
team, which is above any corruption at local and state level - indicates
that serious problems remain to be tackled. Furthermore, it is clearly
very difficult for a team operating out of the capital to be deployed
anywhere in the territory of a country as vast as Brazil, and particularly
without its deployment being known about in advance.
Despite its success, this initiative has been the subject of criticism
in Brazil. Elected politicians proposed severe cuts in its budget
last December, and a number of deputies regarded as supporters of
land-owning interests have made personal attacks on the Ministry
of Labour official who leads the team.
The mobile team has been successful in uncovering cases of slave
labour and bringing about the release of those concerned. However,
further down the line, the institutions of the State have been much
less effective in carrying out prosecutions for those responsible
for slavery.
For example, in 1984 four victims of slave labour in the Vale
Cristalino estate in Santana do Araguaia (at that time the property
of the Volkswagen company), started a legal process in the Labour
Court, with the help of lawyers from the Pastoral Land Commission.
Although they lost in the first instance, they won in the Tribunal
of Justice of Belém in 1986. After a 14 years' struggle, in July
1997, the estate was finally auctioned and the enslaved men received
compensation
In other cases, the authorities have been so slow in prosecuting
those responsible for slavery, that the time limit allowed for a
prosecution of this sort has been surpassed and the prosecution
has had to be abandoned. In other cases, fines have been imposed
but not paid. It seems that the SEFIT mobile team operating in Pará
state last year repeatedly sought information about whether fines
imposed in the past had been paid, but no information was forthcoming.
The next initiative concerns changes in the law. On Brazil's National
Day, last September, President Cardoso announced draft legislation
aimed at protecting human rights. One of the proposed bills was
intended to prevent slave labour and to punish those who exploit
slave labourers. While the President¹s initiative appears a positive
one, in line with his personal denunciation of slavery in 1995,
on closer inspection the Bill makes no explicit reference to either
slave labour or forced labour. It simply proposes amendments to
three articles of Brazil¹s existing Penal Code. One amendment would
make it a punishable offence to prevent someone from leaving their
job, whether by coercion or holding onto their identity documents.
Another amendment introduces the idea of bonded labour, which, as
previously mentioned, is frequently used in isolated estates, by
making it a punishable offence to pressure a worker to use a store
run by the estate, where they run up debts and thus become bonded.
What the Bill does not provide for, however, is substantial extra
punishment for those who exploit slave or bonded labour. In particular,
it does not provide for the confiscation of estates where slave
labour is discovered, and consequently, it does not provide for
a form of punishment of landowners who ultimately profit from slave
labour - even if they never have direct contact with the workers
concerned. For this reason, Anti-Slavery International has criticised
the bill, arguing that it is not dissuasive enough. President Cardoso's
Bill was approved by the Lower Chamber of the National Congress
last December and is awaiting ratification in the Senate. It will
leave intact the system of sub-contracting which allows landowners
to claim ignorance about human rights violations committed on their
lands.
Since the 17th Session of the Working Group, when Anti-Slavery's
representative first expressed concern about the inadequacy of the
monitoring by labour inspectors in rural areas of Brazil, it is
clear that the Brazilian Government has introduced some new measures
to tackle slave labour in Brazil. These are positive measures. However,
Anti-Slavery International is concerned that there still appears
to be a lack of political will on the part of the government to
do all that it is necessary to end the problem of slave labour in
Brazil. We hope that the Working Group will encourage the Brazilian
Government to take more effective measures and, above all, ensure
that those responsible for employing slave labour and profiting
from it are prosecuted.
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