German MP from the far-right AfD party Jörg Dornau uses the labor of political prisoners at his Belarusian enterprise.
This was reported by a man who was detained in February 2024 for 15 days for a like on social networks. According to him, an agreement was signed between the Belarusian Center for the Isolation of Offenders and the deputy’s enterprise. Consequently, political prisoners are paid 5 euros per day, and their work is checked by Dornau himself.
Earlier, the media found out that the deputy is the owner of the company “Tsybulka-Bel”. The man, who was detained earlier, said that he signed a contract, after which he sorted onions “in a dark cold basement” from morning until 6 pm.
He described difficult working conditions: breakfast at 7am and no food or water until the end of the workday at 8pm.
“They brought us to a shelter,” he said. “It was a terrible basement, people were dressed in different clothes, so our hands and feet were freezing.
The onions, he noted, “were delicious.”
According to him, the work was supervised by a foreman who decided whether the detainee would be paid. The labor, according to the prisoner, was not forced, and the money earned was to go toward maintaining the pretrial detention center.
According to the report, Dornau visited his onion plantation at least once to meet with his employees in person.
“I even saw him. A tall, bald man,” said a prisoner with a description that matched Dornau’s physical features. “He came one day in his car with a German registration. He went into the shelter where we were picking onions with the hired workers.
Dornau did not respond to multiple requests for comment from POLITICO on Tuesday.
Since 2019, he has represented the far-right populist AfD party in the parliament of Saxony in eastern Germany and has come under scrutiny for his business in Belarus, the Russia-friendly dictatorship ruled with an iron fist by Alexander Lukashenko.
Last month, the Saxon parliament ordered Dornau to pay a fine of 20,862 euros for failing to disclose his involvement in Zybulka-Bel. The company was registered in Belarus in October 2020, even as the country was engulfed in pro-democracy protests.
According to the Belarusian human rights organization Viasna, as of Tuesday there are more than 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus.
Source: Racurs
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