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First Journalismfund.eu story: Slave workers in Central Europe

BRUSSELS – 24 / 1 / 2010 - First research supported by Journalismfund.eu published. The story immediately was quoted in numerous media in several countries. Romanian journalists had heard a rumour about workers in being lured from outside the EU to the Czech Republic where they work under slave like conditions. The story is researched and published now – but the journalists could not have done it without support from Journalismfund.eu.

By Brigitte Alfter

“While pricey restaurants in Berlin or Amsterdam serve fresh asparagus plucked from fields in the Czech Republic, none of the appreciative diners has the slightest idea that this much-loved item is only on their dinner plates thanks to the backbreaking work carried out by modern-day slaves - men and women lured from poor countries on false pretences and then held captive - beaten and threatened by armed guards if they ask for food, their wages or try to escape.”

Thus is the introduction text of a series of articles about slave workers working under terrible conditions in the very heart of Europe.

Tracing the way of how money is made on what looks like modern-day slave labour is not an easy journalistic task. Adrian Mogos from daily newspaper Journalul in Bucharest heard rumors about the trafficking back in 2007 when he was doing research about illegal migration in Europe.

Mogos’ editor would give him time to do research in Romania, however Journalul could not fund his travels abroad. Not being able to get other funding back in 2007 Mogos parked the idea, until he met an Italian colleague in early 2008, who also researched on the subject of illegal labour migration. Mogos started to gather more information, established contacts to other colleagues and prepared the story next to his every day work.

In 2009 he heard about the newly founded Journalismfund.eu, where he applied and got a research grant of € 4180 for the travel expenses of himself and his team. Then the research got off the ground.

Adrian Mogos cooperated with colleagues from the Ukraine, Moldova and initially also the Czech Republic. “There was a Czech guy I was corresponding with for two-three months, and we agreed to share information, and to publish the story afterwards,” Adrian Mogos recalls. “But when the Romanian colleagues went to the Czech Republic and told him the background, he realised that this included covering organised crime and backed out.”

This was the one main disappointment in the research, according to Mogos. “If we had had at least one investigative journalist in the Czech Republic, we would have gotten much more information,” he believes.

But the fear of the Czech colleagues was apparently not baseless. The Moldovan colleague of the team, Vitalie Calugareanu, addressed his part of the story systematically. “I made a list with the Moldovan citizens deported from Czech Republic in the last two years. It showed that the majority were from Transnistria,” Calugareanu says. He went to their homes and convinced four of them to talk with him.

Ultimately Calugareanu even managed to get the whereabouts of one of the Ukrainian intermediaries of the trafficking. However at his doorstep the research had to stop. “When he heard I was interested in his associate network of slavery, he went inside and came out with a gun. ‘I am going to blow your head off’, he said while loading the gun,” Calugareanu recalls. He got away as quickly as possible.

Also the other team members experienced fear, though not in such a direct way. “The majority of the victims we talked to during the research are afraid to ask for financial compensation which includes the salaries they didn't get,” according to Petru Zoltan and Doru Cobuz, who along with Mogos were the Romanian core of the team. “They think the Romanian mobsters connected with the Ukrainian might start looking for them.”

Published in several countries

Yet the team continued to document the slave trail company by company, tracing those who were buying the fruit of the forced labour all the way to the Netherlands.

The story could not have been done without the support from Journalismfund.eu, Adrian Mogos says. Though Journalul has an investigative department, means are limited and large stories including foreign travel are not an option.

The slave trail story has been published in Romania, the Ukraine, Moldova, Moldova, Croatia and the Ukraine. Further publications are on the way.

Jurnalul National, daily newspaper - Romania - First part / second part . See the printed versions here: Page 1 (pdf, 596 KB) / page 2 (pdf, 3.72 MB) / page 3 (pdf, 990 KB) / page 4 (pdf, 1.98 MB)

Balkan Insight - English version

Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism, Romanian version, English version

Hotnews – The main Romanian on-line news portal

Romaworld – Romanian Roma website