‘We gave our sweat and blood’: Palm oil workers cite child labour, slavery and rape – National | Globalnews.ca

An AP investigation found an invisible workforce consisting of millions of laborers, many of them enduring various forms of exploitation, with the most serious abuses including child labor, outright slavery and allegations of rape.

The AP interviewed more than 130 current and former workers from two dozen palm oil companies who came from eight countries and labored on plantations across wide swaths of Malaysia and Indonesia. Almost all had complaints about their treatment, with some saying they were cheated, threatened, held against their will or forced to work off unsurmountable debts. Others said they were regularly harassed by authorities, swept up in raids and detained in government facilities.

They included members of Myanmar’s long-persecuted Rohingya minority, who fled ethnic cleansing in their homeland only to be sold into the palm oil industry. Fishermen who escaped years of slavery on boats also described coming ashore in search of help, but instead ending up being trafficked onto plantations — sometimes with police involvement.

Source: ‘We gave our sweat and blood’: Palm oil workers cite child labour, slavery and rape – National | Globalnews.ca

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