Barreiras, Brazi
Police freed 850 people who had been forced to work as slaves on a coffee farm in Barreiras, Brazil, the government announced this week. The victims were lured to remote plantations with promises of lucrative jobs, then charged more than they earned for tools, transportation, and food. Some tried to leave, and were forced back to work at gunpoint. “Forced labor is common in this region for jobs like clearing jungle land,” Labor Ministry spokesman Marcelo Campos told Correio Brasiliense, a newspaper in Bahia state. The ministry estimates that 25,000 Brazilians work in slaverylike conditions, most of them in remote Amazon areas.
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