On June 1, four seasonal workers were burned alive inside a minivan at a gas station in Amendolara, Calabria. Two Pakistani suspects have been arrested, and the sole survivor, Taj Mohammad Alamyar, testified that the victims were murdered for demanding unpaid wages.
On Saturday, 5,000 people protested the murders and “caporalato,” a form of modern slavery, in Amendolara. The International Union of Foodworkers condemned the killings as “a horrifying reminder” of systemic violence, noting that 11 other migrant agricultural workers have died in Italy in the past three weeks.
Caporalato is a form of labor brokerage in which criminal middlemen (caporali) are used to recruit and control vulnerable workers and rip off part of their salaries. While workers may have contracts, in practice they are violently coerced into dehumanizing, slavery-like conditions. Though illegal in Italy, the system thrives in agricultural regions like Calabria, providing cheap labor for Europe’s food supply.
