British police raided a travelers’ site on Sunday to rescue 24 men they said had been held as slaves and forced to live in squalor, some for up to 15 years.
More than 200 officers from Bedfordshire Police entered the Green Acres caravan site in Leighton Buzzard, northwest of London, and arrested four men and one woman, all residents on the site, on suspicion of slavery offenses.
Police said the freed men were mostly English, with some of eastern European origin. Detectives said they were all vulnerable — either homeless or alcoholics — and had been recruited by “gangmasters” offering money, the BBC reported.
The Bedfordshire police force had conducted a long-running investigation into suggestions that the men were being held against their will in poor conditions and forced to work for no pay.
SHOCKING
“The men we found at the site were in a poor state of physical health and the conditions they were living in were shockingly filthy and cramped,” said Detective Chief Inspector Sean O’Neil, from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire major crime unit.
“We believe that some of them had been living and working there in a state of virtual slavery, some for just a few weeks and others for up to 15 years,” O’Neil said.
“They’re recruited and told if you come here we’ll pay you ￡80 [US$126.62] a day, we’ll look after you, give you board and lodgings,” he added.
“But when they get here, their hair is cut off them, they’re kept in in some cases [in] horseboxes, dog kennels and old caravans, made to work for no money, given very, very small amounts of food. That’s the worse case,” O’Neil said.
BETTER TREATMENT
“Some are treated a little bit better, but they were told they could not leave, and if they did, they would be beaten up and attacked,” O’Neil said.
“But in fact some people did leave and told us what was going on and when we looked back since 2008, we were aware of 28 people who had made similar accusations,” O’Neil said.
The rescued men have been taken to a medical center.
“Some of these people have come off covered in excrement and dirty clothing because that was all they were allowed to live in,” O’Neil told BBC TV.
“After being cared for, given food and fresh clothing, we hope to then interview them. That in itself will take a long time because these people are institutionalized. One person we know has been here 15 years — so to him this is normal life,” O’Neil said.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS