Thousands of Indian farm workers urged an end to ‘slavery’ in Italy on Tuesday, after the gruesome death of a worker shone a light on the brutal exploitation of undocumented migrants.
Satnam Singh, 31, who had been working without legal papers, died last week after his arm was cut off by a machine. The farmer he worked for dumped him by the side of the road, along with his severed limb.
“He was thrown away like a dog. There is exploitation every day, we suffer from it every day, it must end now,” said Gurmukh Singh, head of the Indian community in the Lazio region of central Italy.
“We come here to work, not to die,” he told AFP.
Children held up colorful signs reading “Justice for Satnam Singh” as the procession wound through Latina, a town in a rural area south of Rome that is home to tens of thousands of Indian migrant workers.
Indians have been working in the Agro Pontino – the Pontine Marshes – since the mid-1980s, harvesting pumpkins, leeks, beans and tomatoes, and working on flower farms or in buffalo mozzarella production.
Singh’s death is under investigation but has sparked a wider debate in Italy about how to tackle systemic abuses in the agricultural sector, where the use of undocumented workers and their abuse by farmers or gangmasters is widespread.
“Satnam died in one day, I die every day. Because I too am a labor victim,” said Parambar Singh, whose eye was seriously injured in an industrial accident.
“My boss said he couldn’t take me to hospital because I didn’t have a contract,” said the 33-year-old, who has struggled to work since.
“I have been waiting for justice for ten months,” he said.
– Paid a pittance –
According to the Osservatorio Placido Rizzotto, which analyzes working conditions in the agricultural sector, workers are paid an average of 20 euros ($21) a day for up to 14 hours of work.
Extreme right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has sought to reduce the number of undocumented migrants to Italy, while increasing legal migration options for workers from outside the EU to tackle labor shortages.
But according to the agricultural industry association Confagricoltura, only about 30 percent of workers who receive visas actually travel to Italy, meaning there are never enough workers to meet farmers’ needs.
This month, Meloni said Italy’s visa system is being exploited by organized crime groups to smuggle in illegal migrants.
She condemned the circumstances of Singh’s death, saying they were “inhumane acts that do not belong to the Italian people”.
“I hope this barbarity is severely punished,” she told her ministers last week.
Italy’s financial police identified nearly 60,000 undocumented workers between January 2023 and June 2024.
But Italy’s largest union, CGIL, estimates that as many as 230,000 people – more than a quarter of seasonal agricultural workers – do not have contracts.
Some are Italian, but most are undocumented foreigners.
Female workers in particular fare poorly, earning even less than their male counterparts and in some cases suffering from sexual exploitation, the report says.
“We all need regular employment contracts so as not to get trapped in this slavery,” said Kaur Akveer, a 37-year-old who was part of a group of women in colorful saris who marched behind community leaders.
‘Satnam looked like my brother. He must have been the last Indian to die,” she said.
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