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WOW2: June 2023 – Women Trailblazers and Activists – 6-24 thru 6-30 [1]

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Date: 2023-06-24  

June 29, 2019 – Ten Moroccan women fought for over a year to get the Huelva police and the Spanish justice system to investigate their stories of rape, exploitation, and abuse. They, with thousands of other Moroccan women, travelled to Spain in 2018 to work the strawberry harvest through a bilateral visa arrangement between the Spain and Morocco. Despite assurances by the Moroccan and Spanish governments, as well as industry entities, that an industry-wide protocol was in place to ensure ethical working practices, fresh allegations were made by a different group of Moroccan women. They say the Ministry for Employment in Morocco promised them good housing, free food, and decent wages if they worked for three months. Each woman paid about €700 for a visa, transport to Spain, and protective clothing, such as gloves and boots. But when they arrived, the housing they were taken to didn’t look like the video showing the nice house they were told they’d be living in. Instead, the housing was filthy, overcrowded, and with no access to clean running water. The women also say they were not paid for their labor, were threatened and racially abused, and some women were sexually assaulted. When they complained, they were threatened with being sent back to Morocco with no pay. One woman said, “The farm owner only knew one phrase in Arabic, which was: “Work, bitch, or you’ll be sent back to Morocco.” She says they were told if they didn’t pick enough fruit they couldn’t take a break or go to the toilet. “I worked for three weeks but only got paid for a few days,” she says. “I’m not a slave or a prostitute. I want to go home but I can’t go back without my wages.” Spain is the biggest exporter of strawberries to Europe. The fruit has become so important to the national economy it’s been called Spain’s “red gold.” Interfresa, the association representing the strawberry industry, insisted that none of the abuse allegations had been proved in court and that the law was being upheld in Huelva. “Both the system of recruitment at origin and general legal and labour issues in our European and democratic country are regulated and supervised by administrations and trade unions and the fact that abuse of any kind occurs in a generalised way is simply impossible,” says Pedro Marín Andrés, director general at Interfresa. Yet lawyers and human rights activists say that the Spanish legal system has no interest in the claims. No formal investigation been launched by either the courts or the police. “Multiple women have now come forward but so far the Spanish legal system has failed to sufficiently investigate their claims,” said Almudena Bernabeu, an international human rights lawyer at Guernica 37 International Justice Chambers in London and Madrid. “It appears as if there are insufficient measures in place to ensure that the working and living conditions of Moroccan women working in Spain are what was promised. The situation currently is weighed almost entirely in favour of the landowners and corporations profiting from their labour. The allegations being made amount to state-sponsored human trafficking and they must be properly dealt with.” Women’s Link Worldwide, an international NGO providing legal services for migrant women, is representing another four women trying to get their claims of abuse accepted by the courts. “The criminal courts recently threw out the charges we have filed because they said that the conditions described in the women’s witness statements, such as non-payment of wages, 10-hour working days and verbal and physical abuse, did not constitute labour exploitation,” says Hannah Wilson, a lawyer at the organisation. Women’s Link pursued further charges through the Spanish courts for sexual assault and other labour offences. “They also questioned whether labour exploitation could be considered because the women were here through a legal bilateral visa agreement. How can we expect women to report abuses if the legal system is not willing to acknowledge their voices?” The Moroccan Ministry for Employment was unavailable for comment. Adding to the abuse, four of the women could lose custody of their children because of pending cases in Morocco, where the attitude is that whether the women “were raped or not [sex was consensual] is irrelevant, they are dirty.”

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/24/2177213/-WOW2-June-2023-Women-Trailblazers-and-Activists-6-24-thru-6-30-II

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