The gangmaster strikes again. Below we publish the editorial by Fabio Ciconte, director of “Terra!”, an environmentalist association involved since 2008 at a local, national and international level in projects and campaigns on the issues of the environment and ecological agriculture, promoting a model of development based on respect for rights. Below is Ciconte’s editorial:
Near Borgo Santa Maria, in Agro Pontino, the agricultural area that embraces Latina, an agricultural worker of Indian nationality, Satnam Singh, suffered a very serious accident at work. The man lost an arm, shredded by the machinery he was working with.
If this news wasn’t bad enough, the epilogue of the story gives you chills. The employer did not help him. He literally abandoned him near his home, like a bag of rubbish. How do you deal with something that you no longer need, because it is now broken, old. In a gesture that tells all the shame of oppression. Yesterday Satnam lost his life.
We are angry and sad. Satnam Singh’s death is a deep wound that leaves its mark on all of us. We cannot remain silent in the face of this criminal act. All these years, with Terra! we continued to denounce the new forms of exploitation, we did so in the South and in the Northern regions because wherever we investigated, we found situations of exploitation and gangmastering.
Satnam Singh’s death is a deep wound that leaves its mark on all of us. Faced with the death of Satnam, who arrived in Italy like many other Indian workers living in the province of Latina, we can only feel a lot of anger. For having said often and loudly that exploitation is there, it exists, and it has many faces. And if you just wanted to look at them, you would understand that there is a lot to do.
Gangmastering and institutions. Because exploitation lurks where there is space. The space left by the institutions. The space left by our inhumanity and indifference. And then we must tell ourselves that we need to return to the streets to reclaim the space that has been taken away from us. As the revolts in Rosarno, Nardò and Latina taught us, only in this way can things truly change.
Source: Il Fatto Alimentare
