Police say they believe that up to 7,500 women, the majority of whom are Romanian, are living in slavery on farms across the region. Guido Volpe, a commander in the carabinieri military police in Sicily, told the Observer that Ragusa was the centre of exploitation on the island.
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“Where I come from in Romanian Moldavia, nobody has a job,” says Bolos, as she nurses her five-month-old daughter in a dark warehouse that is now her home on another farm in Ragusa province. “The average salary there is €200 a month. Here you can make much more, even if you need to suffer.”
The Observer spoke to 10 Romanian women working on farms in Ragusa. All detailed routine sexual assault and exploitation, including working 12-hour days in extreme heat with no water, non-payment of wages and being forced to live in degrading and unsanitary conditions in isolated outbuildings. Their working days often include physical violence, being threatened with weapons and being blackmailed with threats to their children and family.
From April 2014 in Italian which I don't speak
http://www.meltingpot.org/Le-donne-delle-serre.html#.WMoyUjvysdUFrom July 2013 in Italian
http://www.meltingpot.org/Due-volte-sfruttate-Le-donne-rumene-nella-fascia.html#.WMoxiTsrIdUGoogle Translate
2) Women who work in the greenhouses: between exploitation and sexual blackmail
In addition to the different "power" within the agricultural production system of the territory, and in addition to their membership of the European Union, there is another key difference between the Romanian workers and their "colleagues" in North Africa: most migrants from Romania to work in the Ragusa greenhouses are women.
If elsewhere women immigrants from the former Soviet bloc are as "natural" target, in the context of ethnic and gender segmentation of the labor market, to serve in the Italian homes, becoming the so-called "domestic workers and caregivers" of which our country from collapsing welfare badly needs, these women come here already knowing that the wait for the campaign.
What is less clear is whether they already before leaving to be aware, to the end, even the working conditions they will encounter and the ambiguous and murky reality in which their work appears structurally inserted.
Father Benjamin speaks bluntly of so-called " agricultural feasts ", he was the first to publicly denounce:
" It is real parties sexual in which the owners and employers shall share with friends and acquaintances to his female employees. The feasts are widespread especially in small family farms, because the big companies are more controlled. Take place between the greenhouses themselves, or in isolated farmsteads, or sometimes even in low traffic disco-bar. The girls involved are young Romanian workers who often have 20 to 24 years. Sometimes it is also about girls daughters of employees to whom the owner rents the farmhouse. Every so often it happens that they are the children of the owners to exploit them. Once you enter this ride it is difficult to get out. There is a family network or strong friendship in support of these women, and there are no ties of solidarity between workers, a bit 'for the segregation which they are forced, a bit' for the competition triggered by the same employers that trigger a kind of competition with each other out of desperation . "
The basic problem is what a group of people accepts as a proper way to treat outsiders. Italy makes itself a 3rd world country, destroys its future, by accepting that when a foreigner goes there to work they are game for any predation.
The general trend in civilized society is towards treating outsiders with the same rights as natives, Italy falls.
The solution is either to try to civilize Italy or to offer the victims some opportunity out.
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This has been going on for a while and so far nobody has found a solutions that works.
“The women are telling us they need to migrate to try to ensure their children are not living in complete poverty in Romania, but that they themselves are being forced to endure terrible conditions and abuse as a result,” she says. “There is no other work, the women told us, so in order to provice for their families they felt they had to accept this deal. It is a conscious choice they are having to make. What we witnessed is nothing less than forced labour and trafficking as defined by the United Nations International Labour Organisation.”
