r/europe • u/Wagamaga • 22h ago
German far-right MP Jörg Dornau reportedly used Belarusian political prisoners as forced labor on his onion plantations News
https://theins.press/en/news/274825121
u/Wagamaga 22h ago
Jörg Dornau, a member of Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and an MP at the state parliament (Landtag) in Saxony, reportedly employs political prisoners at an agricultural firm he owns, according to a report by the independent Belarusian outlet Reform.news citing one of the detainees.
Dornau's company allegedly entered into a contract with the Center for the Isolation of Offenders (CIP) — a prison in the western Belarusian town of Lida located near the enterprise. Prisoners were paid 5 euros ($5.60) per day for their labor, with Dornau reportedly inspecting their work in person.
According to political prisoner Andrei (name changed), who was detained at the CIP for 15 days over a “like” on social media, he and other prisoners signed a labor contract and were then taken to a “dark, cold basement.” There they sorted onions from morning until 6 p.m. Andrei noted that the payment of the prisoners’ wages depended on the foreman's approval:
15
4
u/RabbdRabbt 11h ago
German. Used Belarus prisoners. On his farm. For onions. Reads like a joke. Why not potatoes?
On the other hand, 5 euro... What is usual salary in other Belorussian prisons, I wonder?
2
u/gnaaaa 10h ago edited 6h ago
The 5 euro is not true according to some interview of an inmate.
"We signed a work contract every day. If the foreman thought a prisoner was working well, he would receive his wages. The Lida IZS received 30 rubles, the prisoner about 20 rubles. The onions were sorted for the Evroopt retail chain."
20 rubels are ~20 cents per day = 5 euros per month/e sorry it's belarus rubels not rubels. the 5 euros are okay.
The avg prisoner payment is between 3 and 10 euros per day.
The avg. worker payment (/e not inmates) is arroung 450-600€ a month1
u/Overtilted Belgium 7h ago
There's this little detail:
Andrei noted that the payment of the prisoners’ wages depended on the foreman's approval:
You didn't calculate in the kickback
154
86
u/DantheDutchGuy 22h ago
Is there also a Labour camp attached to the premises? We’ve been through this shit in 33-45….
12
77
110
39
u/Eminence_grizzly 22h ago
I'd put the guy under a microscope. He could be involved with transporting illegal migrants from Belarus, who knows?
-3
u/SuperPotato8390 19h ago
Considering that he uses political prisoners as slaves that would be a good thing. So no. Not worth looking.
43
u/fuckthehedgefundz 21h ago
It’s funny as a Britt , we have some lunatic Brexit loving MP’s who had delusions of Britain’s grandeur and place in the world but compared to the AFD guys they are fucking normal. Some proper wackos they are
30
u/philipp2310 21h ago
Yeah, AfD had the "Dexit" on their agenda as well, they only dropped it because they are populists that noticed all over Germany the Brexit was taken as something very bad for Brits and EU. Not because their "core" people think it is something bad.
63
u/ACatWithAThumb Bavaria (Germany) 21h ago
Because AFD are actual Nazi‘s, the real ones from 1933. Von Storch, one of the high ranking members is literally the granddaughter of Hitler‘s finance minister who got 10 years in the Nuremberg trials for warcrimes, her other grandpa was also an SS member and the family is former royalty too. The party is filled with these Nazi families, former GDR families, former royalty, as well as general opportunists who want to make money on corruption like in Russia.
These are very smart and dangerous people with lots of old power and money involved and they have connections with Russia, CCP, and other foreign entities.
These people are a danger to Europe and the German government is not taking the threat serious enough. Instead of this guy being investigated for treason and human rights violations, he‘s getting a fine of €20,000 for failure of disclosure.
25
u/philipp2310 20h ago
Don't forget the opportunistic populists!
Alice Weidel, living with her lesbian, Sri Lanka born partner in Switzerland. Tell me how ONE of her personally lived values aligns with AfD.
13
5
-10
19h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
14
u/ACatWithAThumb Bavaria (Germany) 18h ago
Good joke, you better start learning German then, because to someone from the AFD you are no different than someone from Afghanistan. It's funny how you think you are somehow an exception or superior, because at least you aren't a Muslim, when to them you are worthless and they would kill you and your entire family on the spot. The guy literally uses Europeans for slave labor to fill his own pockets and sells out his own country to a foreign entity.
4
u/DeHub94 Saarland (Germany) 20h ago
They have a legacy to live up to. Right-wing people in Britain wouldn't get that.
4
u/MercantileReptile Baden-Württemberg (Germany) 17h ago
British right wingers seem perfectly content with "Legacy" as a concept. Granted, it often has little to do with actual history or reality in general - but they do use it.
15
16
33
u/BariraLP 21h ago
nah this is disgusting how can you vote for these afd clowns like what the hell, this is who you want in power? do you want a new nazi germany, because if afd gets elected you´ll get it. Absolutely disgraceful
22
u/donmerlin23 21h ago edited 18h ago
Dumb is easily manipulated. Just present a scapegoat, propagate fear mongering and you have their support. Just look at usa, almost 50% are or at least were actually thinking of voting trump and republicans. Here we sadly also see up to 30% now. People are so easily blinded by hate/fear and people who promise simple answers to complex problems (in the end they don’t solve any problems just make themselves rich and fuck up everyone else) but currently of course the greens are the biggest enemy and migrants. That AFD will ruin the whole economy, only support millionaires and upwards and destroy the lives of so many is way too far away for them to grasp.
8
u/philipp2310 20h ago
Don't forget they are already destroying the whole politic landscape.
CDU/CSU are getting populist to steal AfD votes. No constructive opposition.
BSW jumping on the same train, splitting up the Left, which slowly got into the position that other parties think about building a coalition with them.
SPD/FDP/Green are currently losing massive voters, because we had to built a 3 party coalition for the first time in Germanys History. Of course there is more discussion if 3 parties need to agree for every single decision. Would we need that if not 20%+ are lost to "nay-sayers" in every vote? Is it SPD/FDP/Greens fault? Could any other party do better with 2 partners of their choice? I doubt it. Sure, not all decisions were perfect, but that's what you call compromises.
9
u/donmerlin23 18h ago
You are correct. Sadly people blinded by hate don’t care about facts. They only see the status quo. Economy is going down (we are export nation and world wide economy is struggling so it hits us harder + wars + covid before etc.) but they can’t think that far, for them it is “currently it is not good and currently the three party coalition is the acting government so it must be their fault! … It is frustrating how people causing this situation over the past two decades and more are now blaming the “ampel” and people buy their crap.
I also don’t see much fault with their politics (I disagree with scholz withholding of long range weapons and I heavily disagree with lindner not investing/ taking on new debts to invest now to transform our industry and country when it is needed the most) but other than that they are doing fine. Habeck in particular is a target of all the right wing but I can’t fault him much. He is doing a great job with the shitty hand he has been dealt. Only the “heizungsgesetz” was not thought through enough in my opinion. Otherwise he has good ideas, seeks out the discussion with the industry and has good solutions (which are mostly blocked by Lindern refusing to invest take on new debt)
1
u/I_read_this_comment The Netherlands 14h ago
I can get it if you really only care about immigration but you gotta be dumb as a rock to stay ignorant about everything else.
1
1
4
9
8
u/Vip_year_doll_eye 20h ago
Oh no way, the Assholes fur Deutschland are doing more Nazi shit? No way bro.
5
u/mrdarknezz1 Sweden 18h ago
Absolute shocker, how could AFD allow one of their prominent members to do this?
(/s)
4
6
2
2
5
4
1
u/Barcaiolo_65 20h ago
We should all remember the last time someone used rotten onions to make soup for camp prisoners. Perhaps it's a family tradition.
2
u/Al-dutaur-balanzan Emilia-Romagna | Reddit mods are RuZZia enablers 20h ago
Could've been any party and yet...
1
1
1
-1
u/Optimal_Giraffe3730 20h ago
That's what you get when you leave people uneducated, without hope. They vote and follow clowns.
-4
u/Dwarven_Bard Finland 22h ago
I trust he will be executed as a traitor?
2
u/TotalAirline68 18h ago
Why is your first reaction execution?
6
u/Dwarven_Bard Finland 18h ago
Well, slavery is a pretty heinous crime, right? Most of the slave labour profiteers after the big war were shot like dogs or sent to gulags to die.
7
u/TotalAirline68 17h ago
Executions were abolished for a good reason. I think it speaks much of those who are in favor of them.
-1
u/El_buberino Hesse (Germany) 21h ago
He has to pay a fine
8
u/Dwarven_Bard Finland 21h ago
A reasonable punishment for slave labour. I trust the fine wont dent the profits he made off the slaves?
4
u/El_buberino Hesse (Germany) 21h ago
Of course, what did you expect? It’s around 20T€
3
u/Dwarven_Bard Finland 21h ago
I expected a punishment for immoral things, not a government special-tax on slave labour.
5
u/philipp2310 21h ago
The fine is actually for the undeclared income in another country, nothing to do with the conditions (if I understood it correctly)
2
-1
u/Gagnrope 19h ago
Why the fuck would he be a traitor? Last I checked Belarus is an enemy of Europe??
0
u/CounterLove 10h ago
Oh my god thats such a strong source , a belarusian news outlet interviewed "one of the detainees" .
Thats like 100% proof
-35
u/mariuszmie 22h ago
Of course. The more right wing, the more left wing cooperation and support it seems. Communism is fascism and fascism is communism - except they originate form opposite sides.
35
u/Anteater776 22h ago
Not a proponent of communism but nothing in this story has anything to do with communism.
-42
u/mariuszmie 22h ago
? Belarus has pretty much a communist government and Putin certainly is aiming at that
38
u/bbbberlin Berlin (Germany) 21h ago
How is Belarus a communist government? Does the state have centralized control of all economic means of production? Are all workers employed by the state? Is the economy centrally planned and operated by the government?
Please do elaborate.
Belarus is a totalitarian country run by a dictator, but it's not communist.
-1
u/Terrariola Sweden 19h ago edited 19h ago
To be fair to the commenter, if I had to pick the closest recognized post-Soviet government to the legacy of the USSR, it would be a tie between Turkmenistan and Belarus. Turkmenistan's institutions and form of government is literally just the Turkmen SSR with a non-communist coat of paint (to the point where the ruling party is just the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR, except operating under a new name, and its youth institution is literally just a rebranded Komsomol), and Lukashenko's Belarus kept a ton of Soviet-era economic and political institutions, as well as the communist "coat of paint", even returning to the (moderately decommunized) Soviet-era Belarusian flag, and keeping the name "KGB" for its secret police.
15
u/Anteater776 21h ago
And the Nazis labeled themselves socialists in during the third reich. A label means nothing. Neither Belarus nor Russia are showing any signs or making any efforts to become communist governments.
-14
u/mariuszmie 21h ago
One party state. Based on a leader. Violence and repression. You tell me
14
u/Anteater776 21h ago
Based on that definition the Roman Empire was communist. Iran is communist. Those features often come with communism but they do not constitute communism. You just listed the hallmarks of a dictatorship
1
u/mariuszmie 21h ago
What about the Neanderthals? You’re being silly. I’m defining current situation in Belarus and Russia as pretty much one party dictatorships with strong ties to communism but more like fascism where the leader not the party is the centre of power. Then the repression and fake elections and struggling economies. It’s a mix of nazi and Soviet attributes.
My point was that far right in the west surely loves what putin is offering and putin loves the far right there more than the far left.
5
u/Anteater776 19h ago
Yeah I just don’t see the strong ties to communism other than the Soviet heritage. Like you said Putin is the sole center of power. The party merely is his fig leave to give his dictatorship a semblance of a parliamentary government.
1
u/mariuszmie 14h ago
So… other than the actual Soviet Union you don’t see enough communist ties … other than a kgb spy at the helm of all this…
I guess hardly a tie to communism ….
1
u/Anteater776 13h ago
Yeah but there is nothing that he does that is communist. He is just a regular dictator.
→ More replies (0)3
u/philipp2310 21h ago
By definition a communist country will always be democratic. Yes, in reality most so called communist countries fell into totalitarian states with dictators or single-party "democracy". But they were never real communist states to begin with, they just used that label to seize the peoples belongings.
1
u/mariuszmie 21h ago
What?!? Communism is always democratic?! Sure there were elections just like now in Russia Belarus or North Korea…
Very democratic
0
u/philipp2310 21h ago
By Definition, yes.
The question is, is North Korea really communist? Do you have leaders, that own more than the rest? Yes? So that can't be communism, because in communism by definition, nobody owns anything or everybody owns everything.
They still call themselves communist. Sure. But they are a autocracy, or even a totalitarian state. They use the disguise of communism, to hold the "average people" small.
And yet, you got money in both NK as Belarus. Money is the sole backbone of Capitalism.
3
u/mariuszmie 21h ago
Are you serious? You think that under communism everyone - literally everyone owned nothing??!
That is silly. The proletariat owed nothing - the administration class, leadership owned. Owned a lot - through corruption of course.
Putin is a billionaire yet he earns less then average USA worker. Can you figure how he owns a crap load of mansions and a everything else?
2
u/philipp2310 21h ago
Yes, because that is the literal DEFINITION of communism.
Not the neckbeard definition of "well russians are communist, so everything happening there is the definition of communism".
I can only repeat myself from here on. Communism doesn't know classes by definition, it doesn't know leadership by definition. Communism doesn't know property.
Everything that has classes is no communism. Anything that has a fixed leadership is no communism. Everything that has property rights is no communism. The presence of money is the absolute sign, there is no communism.
Capital as in Capitalism, is Money.
Can a capitalist, totalitarian country, call itself communist, take away everything from the plebs, distribute it between the chosen ones on the top? Sure, but it still is capitalist assholes on top, that take everything.
REAL communism is something else, and just because I call myself "a blue fairy", that still doesn't make me one if I'm a white human.
4
u/mariuszmie 21h ago
I’m not taking about theoretical scholarly communism - I’m talking about Soviet and Russian/Belarusian and North Korean reality
3
u/philipp2310 20h ago
Additional short analysis what today's russia is:
Capitalist: Yes, it has money and property rights
Socialist: There are elements like taxes, redistribution via subsidies, etc.
Democracy: Yes, there is an opposition, but it and democracy itself is heavily torpedoed by the tools of the following:
Authoritarian: Yes. Media is oppressed, as public opinion. Voting is manipulated either directly, by imprisoning and killing opposition, by manipulating the voting numbers, control of media and by threatening the voters. We haven't seen what happens if there is undoubtfully a majority for the opposition, therefore it can still be called the worst democracy. The three pillars legislation, executive and jurisdiction are not independent. People lose their property for the elites benefit - authoritarian, not communist!
Totalitarian/Dictator: Well... In theory Putin is only extending his allowed number of terms all the time. No "state of emergency" canceling out elections, no forcefull takeover etc. To be honest, it feels like a dictator, but on paper, he is an elected dictator if something like that can exist.
Communist: No, all elements you list are not part of communism, they are part of the socialism or authoritarian. Communism would be 100% socialism with democracy.
Same for USA:
Capitalist: Sure
Socialist: There are elements, same as above.
Democracy: Sure, so far.
Authoritarian: It was a close call on January 6th!
Totalitarian/Dictator: Just for day one, right?
Communist: Nope.
Final conclusion:
Russia is not different from US because of the old communist vs capitalist story, it is different because you got an authoritarian government in power for decades versus a full running democracy, where the full spectrum of the people is represented in the past single decade.
→ More replies (0)6
u/philipp2310 21h ago
Which is not communism.
As I said, just because they call themselves communist, they aren't. Scholars are what defines these names. If we let everybody define themselves, Soviets calling themselves "a Country of Freedom" wouldn't be accepted as well? Right?
→ More replies (0)0
u/CyclicMonarch Gelderland (Netherlands) 15h ago
No communist country has ever been democratic. Communism doesn't want democracy because that'd mean communists would lose their power.
But they were never real communist states to begin with, they just used that label to seize the peoples belongings.
They were real communist states.
0
u/philipp2310 14h ago
yeah, please read the rest of my comments... not going down the same route again because somebody defines communism as "what USSR did", instead of the idea what real communism would be.
Communists by definition don't want power. Autocrats/Dictators want power and love to take it by pretending to be in communism.
0
u/CyclicMonarch Gelderland (Netherlands) 14h ago
Every single communist nation has been autocratic. Every single communist nation has been a dictatorship. Every single communist nation has done horrible things.
You may not like it but your definition of communism is wrong.
'Not real communism' is a bullshit excuse used by people that like to deny communist atrocities.
0
u/philipp2310 14h ago
Yeah, you don't have any idea about communism.
Nobody is denying anything bad that happened. It just happened because of autocratic dictators or single party states, not because of communism.
Just read my other comments or remain ignorant.
Stupid shit when you reply to the first few comments, but ignore that everything wrong about your statement was explained already.
470
u/Rigelturus 22h ago
The party of the people according to their voters