Operation rescues 338 people from slavery

The Labor Attorney General’s Office released this Thursday (28) the results of the second edition of a mega-operation that rescued 338 workers in a situation similar to slavery.

The action involved six public agencies and 49 inspection teams that carried out inspections in 22 states and the Federal District and was the largest joint operation of this type ever carried out in Brazil. Starting on July 4, Operation Regaste, as the action was named, is still in progress.

In rural areas, harvesting services in general, coffee cultivation and raising beef cattle concentrated the largest number of exploited workers. In urban areas, 15 people were rescued from a rehabilitation clinic and six domestic workers were rescued.

Goiás and Minas Gerais were the states with the most people rescued in this month’s joint operation. Among the victims were five children and adolescents and four foreigners of Paraguayan and Venezuelan nationality.

In 2021, the first edition of the operation rescued 136 workers, eight of whom were children and adolescents and five were migrants.

The bodies involved were the Undersecretariat of Labor Inspection (SIT) of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, the Public Ministry of Labor (MPT), the Federal Public Ministry (MPF), the Federal Public Defender’s Office (DPU), the Federal Police (PF) and the Federal Police. Federal Highway (PRF).

Almost half of those rescued were victims of human trafficking

According to the Public Ministry of Labor, at least 149 (47%) rescued in this second edition of Operação Resgate were victims of human trafficking.

“Trafficking happens in different ways, so people can entice workers, transport, host, house, buy workers, in different ways, such as through serious threats, violence, coercion, abuse, fraud, with the purpose of for example of, among others, subjecting them to slave-like labor, servitude or sexual exploitation”, explains labor prosecutor Italvar Filipe de Paiva Medina .

He says that the exploitation of migrants is relatively common in slave labor situations. “Workers are recruited in their places of origin, people generally in social vulnerability, without education, without access to work opportunities, without knowledge of their rights, are recruited by profiteers in the face of false promises of excellent working conditions and remuneration.”

Upon arriving at the site, workers are even more vulnerable: “They are far from all their references”, explains Medina.

The prosecutor cites the case of 29 people rescued in the state of Rondônia, working in soybean fields. “We even had the rescue of a Venezuelan and workers from Manaus, who arrived there and were housed in a precarious way, inside a chicken coop and drinking water from a stream, with a diet that was sometimes limited to rice and flour.”

“In fact, several of these workers in Rondônia were infected with malaria”, he reports.

According to the PGT, 1,125 people have already been rescued in labor analogous to slavery since the beginning of 2022.

In cases of domestic work analogous to slavery, labor prosecutors say that complaints are essential to reveal these situations, since they occur inside homes and involve victims in situations of social vulnerability, with low education and little access to investigation channels. .

Data from the MPT (Ministério Público do Trabalho) show that complaints of domestic work analogous to slavery have doubled since June 8, the date of the launch of A Mulher da Casa Abandonada, a podcast by Sheet about the story of Margarida Bonetti, a Brazilian accused of keeping a maid in conditions analogous to slavery for 20 years in the USA.