Brazil sues Chinese electric carmaker BYD over ‘slave-like' conditions of workers
The suit seeks over £33m in moral damages from the Chinese EV giant as well as contractors JinJiang Construction Brazil and Tecmonta, according to a statement by Brazil 's Public Labour Prosecutor's Office, or MPT.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of an investigation that led to the rescue of 220 Chinese workers from the construction site of BYD's new factory in Camacari city in the northeast of Brazil last December.
The investigation found the Chinese workers were brought to Brazil under false pretences and their visas did not match their jobs.
Prosecutors said the workers were found working in 'slavery-live conditions' and with "minimum comfort and hygiene', calling them victims of international human trafficking
The workers were forced to sleep on beds that did not have mattresses and as many as 30 people shared a bathroom, MPT alleged.
'Working conditions were extremely degrading. Five settlements were kept by BYD, JinJiang and Tecmonta. Some workers slept on beds without mattresses and had their personal belongings alongside with their food,' it claimed.
'There were few bathrooms, which were not gender-assigned. In one of the settlements, there was one toilet for 31 people, forcing workers to wake up at 4am for their personal hygiene before their work.'
MPT also claimed the workers were under "employment contracts with illegal clauses, exhausting work hours and no weekly rest'.
The prosecutors are seeking to force the carmaker and the contractors to follow labour laws and fine them 50,000 Brazilian reais (£6,575) for each violation. This fine will be multiplied by the number of workers affected by the violation.
BYD said it was cooperating with the prosecutors and would respond to the lawsuit in court. The company further said that it was committed to upholding human rights and respecting Brazilian and international labour protections.
Fabio Leal, deputy labour prosecutor, said talks in late December with the three companies had failed to reach an agreement but did not explain why the talks collapsed.
Mr Leal said the Chinese workers had all returned home and they would receive compensation from any payment received from the lawsuit.
'Our lawsuit is very well-founded, with a substantial amount of evidence provided during the investigation process,' he said, adding that a settlement was still possible but through the courts.
The BYD factory in Camacari was set to be operational by March 2025, but the work was halted pending investigations. It was set to be BYD's first and biggest plant outside Asia.
BYD, short for Build Your Dreams, is a major player in the electric vehicles market, producing both passenger vehicles and electric buses. The company has been seeking to expand in Brazil, which is its largest overseas market.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
How the riches of its graduates tied Edinburgh University to slavery
Robert Halliday Gunning was a Victorian success story, an Edinburgh-trained doctor who amassed a fortune in Brazil's goldmines before lavishing his wealth on philanthropic gifts. It also appears he was eaten by guilt. In later life, he ensured his legacy would be linked to acts of benevolence: from the 1880s onwards he paid for endowments, prizes, medals, lectures and academic posts at Edinburgh University, several of which still bear his name. Today they are worth £5.3m. Gunning, a former Edinburgh medical student and anatomist, had been enmeshed in Brazil's enslavement-based gold mining industry. Decades after slavery was criminalised in Britain, he was widely believed to own up to 40 enslaved people – a charge he denied. A recently discovered letter suggests his gifts were a calculated act of reputation washing. He told the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, another institution that enjoyed his largesse, he had 'come forward without being asked, to relieve my conscience, and leave behind what I cannot take away when life ends, and I feel it no sacrifice but an honour to do so'. Gunning was one of hundreds of Edinburgh graduates who made their fortunes from the transatlantic slave trade, on plantations in the Americas or profiting from the empire. They served as doctors on slave ships, administrators, lawyers to enslavers, merchants, plantation owners, or were slavers themselves. The scale of Edinburgh University's entanglements with transatlantic slavery and colonialism has been exposed by new research, commissioned by the university. It has established that Edinburgh raised the equivalent of tens of millions of pounds from donors implicated in slavery or colonial wealth-building. A study by Dr Simon Buck, a research fellow, has found Edinburgh raised at least £250,000 (in historical money) from slavery-linked and colonial donors from the late 1700s until well into the late 1800s. The university sought out those donors, despite bitter and public divisions among students and staff over the morality of enslavement. Buck calculates the donations were equivalent to at least £30m based on current retail prices, derived from tobacco, sugar, cotton, gold, silk, indigo, linen, iron and opium production and trading. Based on present-day earnings, a different measure, that is equivalent to £202m today, or as much as £845m based on the UK's growth in overall wealth and productivity since then. Buck calculates at least £6,258 (in historical money) was raised from hundreds of slavery- and empire-linked donors between 1789 and 1794, about 17% of the total philanthropic donations. That equates to about £1m today based on retail price inflation, or £11m based on growth in earnings. How we present the worth of historical sums of money There are different ways of calculating the present-day value of money spent in previous on work by the Measuring Worth Foundation, Edinburgh University's academics have adopted three measures: the most conservative model is relative price worth (RPW) which measures purchasing power, followed by relative wage or income worth (RWIW) and then finally relative output worth (ROW).For comparison, Edinburgh calculated that the £6,258 it raised in the 1790s to help build a new college building would be worth £955,000 today using the RPW model, £10.9m using the RWIW measure or as much as £78.7m using the ROW Guardian tends to use relative price worth as its main figure, but we have included the other measures for comparison. Similar networks were deployed to fund construction of a new medical school nearly a century later. Between 1873 and 1885, its fundraisers targeted alumni in Britain's colonies, principally India, the Caribbean, where indentured labour remained rife, and Brazil, where slavery was lawful until 1888. Other UK-based donors had also been enriched by slavery or slavery-derived wealth. In all, Buck calculates that £22,600 came from slavery-linked sources and £3,360 from empire-derived wealth, equivalent to 20% of the medical school's fundraising. As well as the many hundreds of one-off donations for those buildings derived from slavery or colonial wealth, the Edinburgh report found 27 specific endowments from donors directly linked to the slave trade and colonial profiteering. They were given to establish professorial chairs in music, agriculture and engineering, or to fund student bursaries, prizes and scholarships. Ten bequests are still active, including Gunning's, which are worth at least £9.4m today, a total that does not factor in the awards paid out over the past two centuries. The sums involved, Buck argues, are an underestimate. The lives of those who were enslaved are largely invisible, but some people have been identified. In 1817, Carpenter Quacco, Nanny Pungy, Phibba and Benneba were among 364 enslaved people registered by Samuel Athill, an Antigua-born medicine alumnus and donor who fought against abolition. There are glimpses of other sources of slavery- or empire-derived funding. Some were directly implicated in enslaving people. During the 1690s, before the union of the Scottish and English parliaments, several professors at the university, its rector and several future donors became investors in the Company of Scotland, a Scottish attempt to create a slavery-based plantation business. Best known for its failed attempt in 1699 to found a colony in Darién, Panama, the Company of Scotland traded in enslaved people and cargo linked to slavery in 1698, 1699, 1701 and 1708 in Madagascar and the Indian Ocean. There were bursaries active at Edinburgh until at least 1971 funded by its investors. According to the report, Edinburgh's town council, which originally owned the university, gave it money raised from taxing slavery-linked ships carrying tobacco, sugar and cotton in the port of Leith. Queen Anne, one of many British monarchs with clear links to transatlantic slavery, funded professorships. Many of the ways in which the university benefited from enslavement are hidden from view, but some are still very visible. Five of Edinburgh's best-known historical buildings were constructed with help from slavery-enriched donors: two former sites of the Royal Infirmary hospital – which was partly run using profits from a Jamaican plantation it owned; the St Cecilia's Hall music collection; the New College, built on the Mound by the Free Church of Scotland, and the Edinburgh College of Art. And the university's accountants were shrewd investors. Buck has discovered its slavery-derived wealth was invested in numerous Scottish Highland estates, war bonds, railway companies and colonial government bonds between 1896 and 1946. Limited time made it impossible to calculate how much profit those investments generated.
The Independent
4 hours ago
- The Independent
To host UN climate talks, Brazil chose one of its poorer cities. That's no accident
When world leaders, diplomats, business leaders, scientists and activists go to Brazil in November for the United Nations' annual climate negotiations, poverty, deforestation and much of the world's troubles will be right in their faces — by design. In past conference cities — including resort areas and playgrounds for the rich such as Bali, Cancun, Paris, Sharm El-Sheikh and Dubai — host nations show off both their amenities and what their communities have done about climate change. But this fall's conference is in a high-poverty city on the edge of the Amazon to demonstrate what needs to be done, said the diplomat who will run the mega-negotiations in Belem known as COP30, or Conference of Parties. What better way to tackle a problem than facing it head on, however uncomfortable, COP30 President-designate André Corrêa do Lago, a veteran Brazilian diplomat, said in an interview with The Associated Press at United Nations headquarters. "We cannot hide the fact that we are in the world with lots of inequalities and where sustainability and fighting climate change is something that has to get closer to people,' do Lago said. That's what Brazilian President President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has in mind, he said. 'When people will go to Belem, you are going to see a developing country and city with considerable infrastructure issues still with, in relative terms, a high percentage of poverty and President Lula thinks it's very important that we talk about climate thinking of all the forests, thinking of poverty and thinking of progress,' do Lago said. 'He wants everybody to see a city that can improve thanks to the results of these debates.' The rich and powerful — as well as poorer nations, activists and media — are already feeling a bit of that discomfort even before getting to Belem. Even with two years of notice, Brazil is way behind in having enough hotel rooms and other accommodations for a global conference that has had 90,000 attendees. The official United Nations COP30 website says Brazil would have an official booking portal by the end of April. But specific plans weren't announced till last week when Brazil said it arranged for two cruise ships with 6,000 beds to help with lodging, saying the country is ensuring 'accommodation for all countries' and starting a system where 98 poorer nations have the option to reserve first. Skyrocketing lodging costs are a problem, do Lago conceded. Some places have been charging $15,000 a night for one person and activists and others have talked of cutting back. But he said prices 'are already going down,' even as local media report otherwise. Do Lago said it will be a local holiday so residents can rent out their homes, adding "a significant supply of apartments.' Big year for climate negotiations This is a significant year for climate negotiations. The 2015 Paris climate agreement required countries to come up with their own plans to reduce the emissions of heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas and then to update those plans every five years. This year nearly every nation — the United States, the No. 2 carbon dioxide emitter and historically biggest polluter, withdrew from the accord earlier this year — has to submit their first plan update. Most of those updates are already late, but the United Nations wants countries to complete them by September when world leaders gather in New York. That would give the United Nations time to calculate how much they would curb future climate change if implemented — before the COP six weeks later. UN Secretary-General Antonio-Guterres, in an interview with AP, reiterated what officials want in those plans: that they cover each nation's entire economy, that they include all greenhouse gases and that they are in line with efforts to limit long-term human-caused warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. That target is the Paris agreement goal. And it's tough since the world is only a couple of tenths of a degree away and last year even temporarily shot past the 1.5 degree mark. Do Lago said he expects the countries' plans will fall short of keeping warming below the 1.5 degree mark, so tackling that gap will be a crucial element of negotiations. Some big things aren't on agenda, like $1.3 trillion for poorer nations Some of the negotiations' most important work won't be on the formal agenda, including these plans, do Lago said. Another is a road map to provide $1.3 trillion in financial help to poorer nations in dealing with climate change. And finally, he said, Brazil 'wants very much to talk about nature, about forests.' The nearby Amazon has been an important part of Earth's natural system to suck large amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but deforestation is a major threat to that. At times, parts of the Amazon have gone from reducing carbon dioxide in the air to increasing it, a 2021 study found. On Wednesday, the United Nation's top court ruled that a clean and healthy environment is a basic human right, a decision that may bolster efforts to come up with stronger action at the November climate conference, some activists said. 'Failure of a state to take appropriate action to protect the climate system ... may constitute an internationally wrongful act,' court President Yuji Iwasawa said during the hearing. Do Lago said the challenge for countries is to think of these emission-reduction plans not as a sacrifice but as a moment to change and grow. 'One of the objectives of this COP is that we hope we will be remembered as a COP of solutions, a COP in which people realized that this agenda is creating more opportunities and challenges,' do Lago said. ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
BBC News
5 hours ago
- BBC News
Edinburgh University had major role in racist theories
The University of Edinburgh played a major role in the creation of racist theories and profited from slavery, a review has published in the university's Race Review, lay out how it received at least the equivalent of £30m in "philanthropic gifts" which can be traced to the profits of colonial commodities like tobacco, sugar and money funded bursaries, scholarships and the construction of university review also says that staff, students and alumni played a "central role" in theories of human differences based on race and civilisation during the Scottish Enlightenment. University principal and vice chancellor, Prof Sir Peter Mathieson, pledged to "learn and move forward" from the report, which was commissioned in review points out that although the Enlightenment is often celebrated for its influence on modern liberal democracy, its thinkers were also responsible for nurturing "some of the most damaging ideas in human history".The work was overseen by Scotland's first black professor, Prof Sir Geoff Palmer, who had seen a draft of the review and contributed to feedback before he died in June. The Race Review sought to identify some of the ways that the university was implicated in the practices and systems of enslavement and colonialism, as well as the apartheid and genocide of colonised people, in Australasia, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas. It says it also "considers some of the consequences of these histories today in terms of statistical under-representation and the persistence of institutional and structural racism".The report has been published online, amid a public pledge to address racial discrimination and research examined how the "legacies of wealth" amassed from slavery and colonialism in the 17th and 18th centuries can be traced to contemporary endowments and capital campaigns. It also looked at how leading thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, who were also prominent university figures in the 18th Century, promoted theories of racial inferiority and white supremacism used to justify year, the university funded further research into its historical links with Arthur Balfour, who played a key role in the creation of Israel and was a former chancellor of the university as well as a Conservative politician and prime minister. Sir Peter said: "Only by fully engaging with and understanding the entirety of our institutional past can we truly learn and move forward. "We are unwavering in our commitment to a future where racism, racial discrimination, and racialised inequalities have no place in higher education or society."We cannot have a selective memory about our past, focusing only on the historical achievements which make us feel proud."He paid tribute to Sir Geoff Palmer - who became Scotland's first black professor in 1989 - and said the work would "honour his memory through our ongoing commitment to advancing race equality within our institution and in society more broadly".In recent years there has been pressure on academic institutions to return exhibits linked with Britain's colonial 2019, the University of Glasgow agreed to raise and spend £20m in reparations after discovering it benefited by millions of pounds from the slave was believed to be the first institution in the UK to implement such a "programme of restorative justice".More recently, the University of Aberdeen repatriated a murdered Aboriginal man's remains, thought to have been obtained during a colonial conquest in is believed the young man was decapitated in the 1820s or 1830s - a time in Australia's history when colonisers used bounties to fuel a trade in tribespeople's body parts. What does the Edinburgh review recommend? Among recommendations in the report was the creation of a naming approval committee to manage requests for naming or renaming university committee would consider how the university acknowledges its historic links to racism and colonialism on campus.A response group identified actions as part of "reparative justice", including continued research into racial injustice, strengthening connections with minoritised communities, boosting scholarships, as well as reinforcing anti-racist educational programmes, after the university pledged to achieve "meaningful change" and transparency, and to "learn from and repair its past".Professor Tommy Curry, co-chairman of the Race Review's research and engagement working group, said the review demonstrates "a level of self-reflection that very few institutions have had the courage to embark on".He said: "We have fundamentally changed what we understood as the Scottish Enlightenment. "We have shown that the study of racial difference had a major home here, and that there are legacies of discrimination that we still have to correct today."We hope our findings will enable the University to emerge as a better version of itself. This sets a standard for other institutions to not only reconsider their historical perspectives and legacies, but also their institutional culture."Fiona McClement, co-leader of the Race Review response group, added: "Our aspiration is to be an anti-racist organisation. "We want to ensure that are a welcoming and nurturing environment in which all members of our community feel a sense of belonging, and can flourish and succeed without facing unjust racialised barriers."
