Brazil to resume slave labor raids after stoppage

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20071008-0950-brazil-rights-slaves.html

By Guido Nejamkis
REUTERS

9:50 a.m. October 8, 2007

BRASILIA – Brazilian government inspectors will resume raids this week to combat slave labor in remote rural areas, ending an interruption caused by criticism by lawmakers, the Labor Ministry said Monday.

The inspectors halted their work last month after a Senate commission questioned a raid in June that freed a record 1,064 workers from a farm in the northern state of Para.

The freed agriculture workers had been working exhausting hours for meager wages, being fed rotten food and putrid water, according to official reports.

Para is notorious as the state with the highest slave labor rates in Brazil, which is estimated to have some 25,000 people working in subhuman conditions and was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888.

The labor ministry said conditions at the farm, where workers often received no pay after discounting food and lodging, constituted slave-like labor. Workers lived in overcrowded barracks and were transported to work in buses without any seats.

FULL story at link.