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FRANCE-BURUNDI-LABOUR-TRIAL
Ex-Burundi diplomat tried in France for forced labour
NANTERRE, France, Sept 9, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – A former Burundi diplomat
working for the UN and his wife went on trial Monday near Paris, accused of
forcing a man to work in their home for 10 years in slave-like conditions.
Gabriel Mpozagara, a former top official at the United Nations’ cultural
agency UNESCO and ex-government minister in Burundi, faces several charges
alongside his wife, including human trafficking and failing to declare an
employee.
Methode Sindayigaya’s lawyers say he was forced to work 19 hours a day,
seven days a week in the couple’s home in Ville d’Avray near Versailles,
where he slept in squalid conditions in the basement.
They also claim he was promised around 50 euros ($55) a month for a job
that was supposed to last three months, though he was paid only a fraction of
that.
Mpozagara denies the accusations, saying the Burundian man was an au pair
tasked in particular with helping his disabled son.
The alleged victim, now 39, also claims his passport was taken from him
when he arrived in France in 2008.
“They stole my life,” Sindayigaya told French daily Liberation in an
interview.
He said the Mpozagaras would not let him tell his wife or two children —
aged one and three years old when he left Burundi — any details of his
situation during rare telephone calls home.
“They would always ask me, ‘Dad, why don’t you come home? Don’t you love
us anymore?'” Sindayigaya told Liberation.
He was freed by police in July 2018 after workers spotted him during a job
at Mpozagara’s home and told authorities.
Sindayigaya has since obtained asylum in France and his wife and children
have joined him in the central Loir-et-Cher region.
Mpozagara’s lawyer Dominique Naveau-Duschesne told AFP the former diplomat
was “very saddened” by the accusation which he considered defamatory. “We
will do everything to expose the truth,” she said.
“He was a friend of the family, who was treated as one of the family.
BSS/AFP/RY/20:30 hrs