Slavery returns to Brazil

As many as 250,000 slaves in Brazil.
A farm producing charcoal at the border of the Amazon forest in Para state, Brazil. The Ministry of Labor has done almost nothing to assign responsibility for slavery cases in such farms to the pig-iron producers, as the charcoal is produced exclusively to supply these extremely profitable companies.

Modern Slavery in Brazil.  And no one goes to jail.

• Far from the trendy tourist beaches of Rio there is a hidden world of slavery helping to power the modern economy of Brazil.

In 2003 the International Labor Organization estimated that 25,000 Brazilians were  working in conditions it described as slavery.  Other groups put the number today at 250,000.
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Luis Machado, head of the ILO's unit to combat forced labor agrees the numbers have grown, reports the Los Angeles Times.
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"Over 40,000 workers have been rescued since 1995," he said. "But not one single person in the history of Brazil has been jailed for this crime. These men feel untouchable. They feel they are risking nothing by doing this."

Tens of thousands of Brazilians living in what critics call modern-day slavery, mostly in the Amazon jungle, where ranch owners are the law of the land.
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Promised work, the victims are usually taken to remote, unfamiliar areas, where they face harsh conditions they would never have agreed to and have little chance of escape.
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Some receive little or no pay. Others are told they must work to pay off "debts" for room and board. Some are threatened with violence or abused. Others simply cannot afford the journey home.
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Brutal conditions and a culture of impunity across the 1.5-million-square-mile Amazon region persist in the background of Brazil's stunning economic growth.
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Much of the work that laborers do reflects the illegality that reigns in the jungle. They are put to work cutting down the forest or at illegal cattle farms on protected parts of the Amazon. Others shovel illegally harvested wood into hot pits to make charcoal, often without protective gear.

The government of President Dilma Rousseff has said it is committed to fighting abuse of workers as well as illegal deforestation. Rousseff has been facing pressure from environmental and civil society groups over a new Forest Code bill that would roll back legal protections for the world's largest rain forest.
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Enforcing government rule across the Brazilian Amazon is no easy task. To find out where deforestation is occurring or illegal charcoal camps are operating, workers for nongovernmental organizations fly for hours over the jungle, circling what from a distance look like illegal activities.
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Then a professional navigator tries to pin down the location and later find a way to reach the site.
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The government simply can't be going to every farm to check. The resources don't exist. So rights groups rely on trying to pressure the government to punish proven offenders and educating potential victims about the risks of taking distant jobs they know little about.    (Los Angeles Times)