The German group Volkswagen, the second largest in the world, faces new accusations this Sunday linked to the Brazilian dictatorship, this time for alleged slavery practices between 1974 and 1986, according to the German press.
According to ARD public television and the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, quoted by Agence France-Presse (AFP), Volkswagen was summoned to a court hearing in Brasilia, after a notice sent by the local court on May 19.
Questioned by AFP, a Volkswagen spokesman assured that the company took the matter and the “possible incidents” that occurred “very seriously”, “on which the investigations of the Brazilian judicial authorities are based”.
The German group declined to add more information “due to a possible court case.”
The alleged facts date back to the period between 1974 and 1986, during the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil between 1964 and 1985, and former employees of the group have been seeking compensation for several years, to this day without success.
The complaints examined by the Brazilian court state, according to the German press, that the automaker resorted to “practices of slavery” and “human trafficking”, accusing the group of being complicit in “systematic violations of human rights”.
At the time, the group planned to build a large agricultural field next to the Amazon basin for the meat trade, called Companhia Vale do Rio Cristalino.
Hundreds of day laborers and seasonal workers were recruited at the time for deforestation work, in particular on 70,000 hectares, through intermediaries, but, according to the German press, probably with the consent of the manufacturer’s management.
According to German media, which consulted more than 2,000 pages of testimonies and police reports, the workers were repeatedly subjected to abuse and violence by intermediaries and armed guards at the site.
“It was a form of modern slavery,” Rafael Garcia, the Brazilian prosecutor in Rio de Janeiro in charge of the investigation, told German media.
According to the prosecutor, Volkswagen “manifestly not only accepted this form of slavery but encouraged it, because it was cheap labor,” he added.
Source: Observadora
