Tens of thousands "Nuclear slaves" discovered at Fukushima

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An in-depth journalistic investigation uncovered that tens of thousands of unemployed Japanese were tricked into working underpaid and highly dangerous jobs on the area of Fukushima's nuclear disaster. The  most disturbing aspect of the scheme is that Yakuza behave as enforcers who keep consitently the "nuclear slaves" from complaining or leaving their jobs.

On Friday, Reuters published the results of its investigation of working conditions of the people that are dealing with the aftermath of the nuclear incident at Fukushima. Journalists discovered a number of individuals employed in decontamination activities were employed by subcontractors of TEPCO, the giant utility company that owns Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Continue after the break.

Based on police sources, those companies are linked with the Japanese crime syndicates, the Yakuza. People who were originally hired for "radiation measuring" found themselves on "ground zero" of the Fukushima reactor with insufficient protective gear and confronted with dangerously high degrees of radiation.

TEPCO's subcontractors, around 800 firms, often unregistered, are utilizing unskilled laborers from poor neighborhoods of Tokyo and Osaka.

Our Source reports that "labor brokers", since they are known in Japan, resort to "buying" laborers by paying off their debts and then forcing them to work in hazardous conditions until their debt to the "labor broker" is paid off. Such "employment schemes" are commonly called "indentured servitude" and are a questionnaire of slavery that is explicitly prohibited in many civilized countries.

However, Source reports that Japanese corporations have longstanding traditions of employing underpaid laborers deprived of the basic rights for social and medical protection. Lake Barrett, a former US nuclear regulator and an advisor to Tepco, told the news headlines agency that existing practices won't be changed for Fukushima decontamination: "There's been a century of tradition of big Japanese companies using contractors, and that's just the way it's in Japan. You're not going to alter that overnight simply because you've a new job here, so I do believe you've to adapt."