"Provincial Court ratifies that Furukawa subjected its harvest workers to serfdom", 19 October 2021

...On October 15, 2021, the Provincial Court of Justice of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas ratified that the company Furukawa Plantaciones C.A. del Ecuador is obliged to repair the serious human rights violations committed within its farms in Santo Domingo, Los Ríos, and Esmeraldas, where more than 1,200 peasants of all ages have harvested abaca for almost 6 decades.

The Court has found sufficient evidence in the first instance court filing to verify the discriminatory and racist treatment by which the company subjected 123 people to serfdom, one of the contemporary forms of slavery prohibited nationally and internationally, by keeping entire families living in precarious camps, without basic services or environmental sanitation, and forced labor, including child labor, which violated economic, social and cultural rights – to work, social security, education, health and housing – and severely impoverished them...

However, it is surprising that the Provincial Court of Santo Domingo has released the defendant state institutions from responsibility and has considered sufficient a few actions that have not been proportional to the seriousness of the human rights violations demonstrated in the process...

The systematic actions of the company and the tolerance of the Ecuadorian state in the face of these acts will not go unpunished...