Thousands of Indian Sikhs employed in Italy as farm labourers are exposed to racist abuse and treated as modern-day slaves, according to a report presented in the national parliament yesterday.
Over the past two decades, about 30,000 Sikhs have settled in Agro Pontino, an area south-east of Rome that was drained from swamps and turned into agricultural land in the 1930s by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
“Our community is in shock,” Dhillon Karamjist Singh, a local Sikh leader, said at a press conference hosted by the Chamber of Deputies, Italy’s lower assembly.
He said farm labourers who try to protest are regularly beaten. “When inspections come,” Singh added, “bosses tell us to say that we are paid eight euros ($11) per hour for a six-hour working day, rather than the three euros per hour for a 15-hour working day.”
In a report called ‘Getting Doped to Work as Slaves,’ the In Migrazione association claimed that some workers have resorted to taking drugs such as opium or methamphetamine - even if it goes against their religion - in order to handle the huge workload.
Marco Omizzolo, who conducted the research, said there had been three police operations since the start of the year against the underground trade in narcotics, leading to the arrest of eight drug dealers.
Calling on Italian institutions to strengthen controls and support integration programmes for Sikh workers, In Migrazione said the farmers were being subjected to “strenuous, inhuman work, unimaginable for a society that calls itself civilised and for a democratic country.”
K Singh was one of the workers quoted in the report.
“Some Indians buy a little substance not to feel pain in their arms, legs and back. The boss says ‘work more, work, work, work, come on, come on,’ and after 14 hours in the fields, how can you work more,” he asked.
Omizzolo said racist attacks were “very common.”
Some Sikhs have been forced to cut their beards or take off their turbans because they looked “too Indian,” he said.
Others are pelted with stones or thrown off their bicycles as they return home from the fields, he added.
The Agro Pontino is a right-wing stronghold, where Mussolini is admired by many as the redeemer of swampy lands. Omizzolo was unsure whether that was a factor, but said local authorities have been “very slow to react to a situation that has been known for a long time.”