A young man from Mali was shot dead on June 2 in the Italian province of Calabria. Soumaila Sacko, 29, leaves behind his wife and a five-year-old daughter in Mali and friends and colleagues in southern Italy. He worked to bring in the harvest and was also an activist for the grass roots union, USB, which campaigns on behalf of African day labourers.
Sacko was one of thousands of workers who work as harvesters and day labourers, earning a pittance on the orchards of vegetable and agricultural farms in the hinterland of Gioia Tauro. The workers are housed in tents, barracks or improvised huts made of wood and plastic sheeting.
Most of the young workers come from Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast or Senegal. Many of them have no proper papers and are treated like slaves.
On Tuesday, a 43-year-old farmer named Pontoriero was arrested on suspicion of murder. The newspaper Corriere della Sera writes that the Pontoriero family is alleged to be associated with the Ndrangheta.