One of the largest cases of trafficking in people and their enslavement by state-owned forests in the history of the Czech Republic is reported in Germany and Romanian police are dealing with it, but the Czech police have not yet started criminal proceedings. Recruited Romanians probably still continue doing slave work in the Sumava Mountains. The terrible abuse of the foreigners' labour started in the Vietnamese Sapa market in Prague in 2009 when labour mediators offered Vietnamese men and women training and work for the Lesy Ceske Republiky (LCR) state forest company.

"We are gathering information, assessing it and analysing new facts, but criminal proceedings have not yet been launched," Petr Hantak, spokesman for the police Squad for Uncovering Organised Crime (UOOZ).


"It seemed credible, but the contracts they signed were in Czech and interpeters were not shown them. Besides, it was a contract on training under which the people were to pay 500 crowns for planting trees," described lawyer Stepanka Mikova, which together with her colleagues represents more than 100 people who have filed a complaint.

Bulgarians, Mongolians, Romanians, Slovaks, Ukrainians and Vietnamese worked in Czech forests. However, they worked at separate places so that they could not exchange experience.

The conditions in which the people lived were terrible. "We know from their testimonies that they were hungry. Sometimes they got rice and some essential food. Many collected what they found in the forests. Some even claimed they ate wormwood leaves - told Mikova - Some were threatened with violence and physical elimination. Now we have found out that those who were keeping them under watch had weapons on all the time. When a foreign workers suffered an injury when working with a saw, he was not often treated at all". Those who could not work over an injury, were simply taken to the border and left without any assistance,

LCR, however, dismisses any responsibility for the foreigners. "We realize that the situation is serious and that it must be solved for the future, even though the workers have no contractual relationship with Lesy CR," the company's spokesman Zbynek Boublik said last March, but the situation is similar more than three months later.
Josef Svoboda, from LCR, said that the company has no information about any people from Romania working in the Sumava at the moment. The fact is tha workers for LCR are mediated by Less & Forrest whose sub-supppliers are smaller agencies and firms, some of which have been stripped of licence in the meantime.
Tthe workers have been urging the promised money and punishment of the people who maltreated them for more than a year, but only less than one tenth of them have decided to fight for their claims. "We have filed more than 50 criminal complaints. We represent about 100 clients, but new are coming," told Mikova. She said according to the Labour and Social Affairs Ministry there are some 1500 to 2 000 injured persons.