The Observer: Thousands of Romanian women, exploited and raped in Sicily’s farm
Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now.
Thousands of Romanian women working in agriculture in Ragusa Province in Italy are victims are numerous abuses, including sexual aggressions and threats, The Observer reports.
“Hidden among fields of flapping white plastic tents across Ragusa province, 5,000 Romanian women are working as seasonal agricultural workers. Their treatment is a growing human rights scandal, being perpetrated with almost complete impunity,” the British journalists say.
An Italian migrant rights organisation, the Proxyma Association, estimates that more than half of all Romanian women working in the greenhouses are forced into sexual relations with their employers. Almost all of them work in conditions of forced labour and severe exploitation.
Police suspect that up to 7,500 women, the majority of whom are Romanian, are living in slavery on farms across the region. Guido Volpe, a commander in the carabinieri military police in Sicily, told the Observer that Ragusa was the centre of exploitation on the island.
“These women are working as slaves in the fields and we know they are blackmailed to have sex with the owners of the farms or greenhouses because of their psychological subjugation,” he says. “It is not easy to investigate or stop this from happening, as the women are mostly too afraid to speak out.”
Many of the Romanian women leave children and dependent families at home and feel forced into making the desperate choices.
The Observer spoke to 10 Romanian women working on farms in Ragusa. All detailed routine sexual assault and exploitation, including working 12-hour days in extreme heat with no water, non-payment of wages and being forced to live in degrading and unsanitary conditions in isolated outbuildings. Their working days often include physical violence, being threatened with weapons and being blackmailed with threats to their children and family.
One of the victims, Nicoleta Boros recounted to the British journalists about the hell that she was going through while working in Ragusa, the humiliation of being forced to have sex with the employer.
“The first time, it was my husband who said I had to do this. That the owner of the greenhouse where we had been given work wanted to sleep with me and if we refused he wouldn’t pay us and would send us off his land,” she says.
Read more here.
DONATE: Support our work
In an ever changing and challenging world, the media is constantly struggling to resist. Romania Journal makes no exception. We’ve been informing you, our readers, for almost 10 years, as extensively as we can, but, as we reject any state funding and private advertising is scarce, we need your help to keep on going.So, if you enjoy our work, you can contribute to endorse the Romania Journal team. Any amount is welcome, no strings attached. Choose to join with one of the following options:
The women from Romania are very mistreated all over Italy, not only in the south. The Italians men are criminals and they must pay for the way they treat emigrants.Their country is full of woman slaves from Nigeria and Romania. In the last years lots of crimes, involving emigrants were done, and more than half were not even punished. Mariana Serekesh young woman from Romania 19 years old was found killed last year, after beeing forced into prostitution by her husband. No criminal found. Another case was Venetita Niacsu from Romania found killed next to a station of gas, and even if they saw on camera the car number of the killer’s car, the murderer got away not punished. There are hundreds of examples like this. Their police cover the criminals. Every 3 days a woman is killed in Italy and they do nothing. Please, Europe, do something, because the governement of Romania is way to corrupt to solve this problems.