Volkswagen is accused of slave labor practices in Brazil during the dictatorship

The German group Volkswagen, the second largest car manufacturer in the world, faces new accusations related to the dictatorship in Brazil, but this time for slave labor practices between 1974 and 1986, published this Sunday (29) by several German media.

According to the public television network ARD and the newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, Volkswagen was summoned to appear on June 14 at a labor court in Brasilia.

Questioned by AFP, a spokesman for Volkswagen assured that the company took this case “very seriously” and the “possible incidents” that would have occurred “and on which the investigations of the Brazilian judicial authorities are based”.

The facts would have occurred between 1974 and 1986, when the dictatorship was in force in Brazil (1964 to 1986). Group employees during this period have been claiming compensation for several years, but so far without success.

Volkswagen said on Sunday that it was taking the investigation conducted by the Public Ministry into possible human rights violations in the country very seriously.

“We can assure you that we take the eventual cases of Fazenda Rio Cristalino, to which the investigation authorities in Brazil refer, very seriously,” the German company said in an emailed note.

TRAFFICKING IN PEOPLE

According to the German media, the complaints examined by the Brazilian court allege that the automaker used “practices analogous to slavery” and “human trafficking” and accuse the group of having been an accomplice in “systematic violations of human rights”.

At the time, the group’s project was to build a large agricultural site on the banks of the Amazon for the meat trade, the “Companhia Vale do Rio Cristalino”.

To this end, hundreds of day laborers and temporary workers were hired through intermediaries for deforestation work on 70,000 hectares of land.

According to the German media, it is likely that the company’s management has consented to these hirings. The press, which consulted more than 2,000 pages of depositions and police reports, indicates that workers were sometimes mistreated by intermediaries and armed guards.

Among the documents are testimonies about mistreatment of workers who tried to escape and even suspicious disappearances. A worker’s wife was raped as punishment, according to German media. A mother even claims her son died as a result of the abuse.

Volkswagen has already faced Brazilian justice in the past during the dictatorship. In 2020, the group agreed to pay 36 million reais to compensate families of former employees tortured or killed in that period.

The former employees and their families said that VW’s security service in Brazil collaborated with the military to identify possible suspects, who were detained and tortured. This collaboration was confirmed by an independent report requested by the company in 2016.

_{AFP (with Reuters)}