CINA

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Thousands of seasonal migrant workers from Asia, most of them from China, Vietnam and Thailand, come to Sweden - the "homeland" of the "social market"/(capitalist) "welfare state"(^^) - each summer to pick wild berries in the north under mainly difficult working conditions.

And since last Friday(8.06) some of them are protesting against what they (and many others) characterize as a kind of slave labour.

"Last Friday night, around 170 Chinese berry pickers sat down on the road to protest," Kerstin Asplund, who is in charge of social services in the northern municipality of Storuman, told the media and added "It's criminal how they're treated, they're treated just like slaves".

The protesters carried out their sit-in after marching 15 kilometres, carrying signs reading "SOS" and "Help," near the wooded area where they had been forced to pick berries, not far from the Arctic Circle.

The demonstrators are part of a group of hundreds of Asian berry-pickers who arrived in Sweden's isolated northern region in recent days.

Last Friday's Stockholm News published the following short report:

Chinese berry-pickers in protest march

Berry-pickers who recently arrived to north-Sweden, have started a 30 km protest march towards the city Storuman. The berry pickers who come from China, have for some reason not gotten any payments yet from their China-based staffing company.

Around 200 Chinese berry pickers went along in the protest march starting in the village Långsjöby (in Lapland) towards the small city of Storuman. Some of them held up home made placards with the words 'SOS' and 'HELP'.

Volonteers handed out food

Ture Rönnholm, saw the protest marsh passing by just outside his home.

- From what I have heard, they have been cheated in some way. I don't if it is the enlister in China or by the travel agent, says Ture Rönnholm to news tabloid Extressen.

Ture Rönnholm did also volontarily, together with his daughters, hand out food to the protesting berry-pickers. This until today when the local authorities got involved.

After 15 km of protest marching the local municipality arranged a bus transport for them to a village called Stensele. The municipality have arranged so that they can live temporarily in a school where they will have access to showers, toilets and kitchen facilities.

http://www.stockholmnews.com/more.aspx?NID=5762

Related article:
☞ Hungry migrant workers shoot birds for food (The Local, 8.02)