An estimated 25 000 people are working as slave labourers in Brazil clearing the Amazon jungle for ranchers, or producing pig iron in the forest using charcoal smelters, according to a new study.
An unpublished report for the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO) concludes that despite the best efforts of the government of President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva to free slaves and prosecute offenders, the level of lawlessness in the country’s interior means that the practice continues.
The report also uncovers a new area of labour ”analogous to slavery”, where men, women and children who are illegal immigrants from Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay are working in sweatshops in São Paulo.
Workshop owners are part of a flourishing cheap clothes industry that uses the fear of deportation to enforce harsh conditions under which people are sometimes locked up where they work and sleep.
The Guardian newspaper was passed a copy of the report because anti-slavery campaigners feared that the ILO was suppressing it. They believe that officials are nervous of criticism of the organisation’s failure to make an impact on the situation.
The report is also sensitive because it shows that the United States is benefiting directly from the proceeds of slavery.
It says 92% of the pig iron produced in the forest is exported to US mills. Much of the smelting is done by forced labour, which contravenes Section 307 of the US tariff Act of 1930, which prohibits the ”import of merchandise that has been produced in whole or in part with prison labour, forced labour, or indentured labour in the penal system”.
But Roger Plant, head of the ILO’s forced labour programme in Geneva, denied the report was being withheld. He said it had been held back to include more statistics and would be updated and published next year.
”It is a good report and full of insights and useful information,” he said. ”It is certainly food for thought for the Department of Homeland Security and the US customs service, which has made much of preventing the import of goods made by child labour but is only sleepily invoking the tariff act as far as adult slaves are concerned.”
Plant said the report made clear that the Brazilian government was making efforts to attack slavery, and it was unfair to single out a single state when Peru and Bolivia also had slaves, probably in similar numbers.
New figures show that since the Lula government took office in January 2002 with a promise to end slave labour, 5 400 slave workers have been released and £1,4-million paid in compensation.
But the author of the report, Jan Rocha, said: ”After a good start cracking down, the government has given in to the landowners’ lobby’s pressure in Congress to delay a Bill that would confiscate their estates when slave labour has been found, in exchange for their votes on other Bills.
”As the report pointed out the scandalous fact is that many federal congressmen and regional politicos have been found using slave labour on their cattle ranches — so some of the men who got the law postponed are those who personally benefit from the delay.” — Â