photo from L'Espresso

Like many others, I have read the investigative article in this week’s l'Espresso about the new slavery in Puglia. A photo of a racist mafia Italy. An Italy that is split by abuse, homicide, and rape on clandestine immigrants. It made me ashamed of being Italian.

In our country, in the countryside around Foggia, between Torremaggiore, Trinitapoli and Borgo Libertà, slavery is practised at almost 200 years after the birth of Lincoln. If it’s possible, it’s done in a way that is more ferocious than at that time.
The harvest of the red gold, the tomato, has become blood red.

The victims are those clandestines attracted to Italy by the mirage of work and finished in hovels, in disastrous hygienic conditions, with starvation wages and with the fear of daily beatings.

Those who rebel were (and still are) killed as has probably happened to the 13 people from Poland that were investigated last month by the Polish Ambassador. What is really disturbing is the vastness of this phenomenon and the length of time it has been going on, and all this in the light of day.

Is it possible that no one knew? That local politicians didn’t know? That people living in the area didn’t know? Italy cannot tolerate extra-territorial areas in the hands of the mafia. Puglia must return to the control of the State and under the control of honest people.Italia dei Valori will present a law against the new tyrants who abuse people, with severe penalties. Today the only ones who pay are the clandestine immigrants who should not be in Italy, but in their own country. Tomorrow above all those who should be paying and dearly are those who exploit them.