Italy’s largest trade union confederation has said it is joining the prosecution of a farm owner charged with murdering an Indian migrant worker who bled to death in June last year.
The Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) will be joining the case as civil complainants, according to Secretary-General Maurizio Landini.
Satnam Singh, 31, was fatally injured while working with heavy machinery in a vegetable field in Latina, an agricultural province south of Rome. The farm’s owner, 39-year-old Antonello Lovato, failed to call an ambulance after Singh’s arm was cut off.
Lovato stands accused of abandoning Singh while he was injured and bleeding. Prosecutors originally considered charging Lovato with manslaughter, but raised the charge to murder with malice, arguing he was aware the actions he took could cause death.
The trial is set to last until May. At the opening session on Tuesday, Lovato said that “he lost his head” when he found the injured Singh, who was working in the country illegally.
“I wasn’t myself. I didn’t want him to die,” he said, according to news agency ANSA.
Italy’s Minister of Labour Marina Calderone has labelled Singh’s death an “act of barbarity”. The Ministry of Labour has since promised to take new action against labour exploitation, including by tackling the illegal gangmaster employment system which operates in Italy, an arrangement known as “caporalato”.
Demonstrations outside the court
Outside the court, dozens of union members demonstrated against the system of underpaid migrant labour in Italy’s agricultural sector.
“I believe that what happened was apparent to everyone,” Landini told the crowd.
“As is the logic of exploitation known as ‘caporalato’, which allows for people to be treated like merchandise, like parts of a machine that can be easily bought and sold for the lowest price. And I insist that it is this culture that needs to be changed.”
“We think it is important to seek justice, above all to put in motion everything necessary to change the way of doing business so episodes like this can never be repeated,” Landini said.
“We don’t think this is an isolated case. It is a mistake to think this problem can be resolved with this trial. We are worried because the season is starting again.”
The exploitation of agricultural migrant workers is a long-running issue in Italy. In a separate case last July, Italian police announced they had freed dozens of Indian farm labourers from slavery-level working conditions in northern Italy.
The workers were allegedly forced to toil for more than 10 hours a day, seven days a week, paid only a meagre wage which was then used to pay off debts to their alleged gangmasters.
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