BRAZIL: An estimated 25,000 people are working as slave labourers in Brazil, clearing the Amazon jungle for ranchers or producing pig iron in the forest using charcoal smelters.
A new unpublished report for the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO) concludes that despite the best efforts of the government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to free slaves and prosecute offenders, the lawlessness in the country's interior means the practice continues.
The report also uncovers a new area of labour "analogous to slavery", where men, women and children who are illegal immigrants from Bolivia, Peru and Paraguay are working in sweatshops in Sao Paulo.
Workshop owners are part of a flourishing cheap clothes industry that uses the fear of deportation to enforce harsh conditions under which people are sometimes locked up where they work and sleep.
The London Guardian newspaper was passed a copy of the report because anti-slavery campaigners feared the ILO was suppressing it. They believe that officials are nervous of criticism of the organisation's failure to make an impact on the situation.
The report is also sensitive because it shows that the US is directly benefiting from the proceeds of slavery.
It says 92 per cent of the pig iron produced in the forest is exported to US mills. Much of the smelting is done by forced labour, which contravenes Section 307 of the US tariff act of 1930, which prohibits the "import of merchandise that has been produced in whole or in part with prison labour, forced labour, or indentured labour in the penal system".
However, Mr Roger Plant, head of the ILO's forced labour programme in Geneva, denied the report was being withheld. He said it had been held back to include more statistics, and it would be published next year.
"It is a good report, and full of insights and useful information. It is certainly food for thought for the Department of Homeland Security and the US customs service, which has made much of preventing the import of goods made by child labour but is only sleepily invoking the tariff act as far as adult slaves are concerned."
Mr Plant said the report made clear that the Brazilian government was making efforts to attack slavery, and it was unfair to single out a single state when Peru and Bolivia also had slaves.
New figures show that since the Lula government took office in January 2002 with a promise to end slave labour, 5,400 slave workers have been released and £1.4 million paid to them in compensation.
However, the author of the report, Ms Jan Rocha, said yesterday: "After a good start cracking down, the government has given in to the landowners' lobby's pressure in congress to delay a bill that would confiscate their estates when slave labour has been found, in exchange for their votes on other bills.
"As the report pointed out, the scandalous fact is that many federal congressmen and regional politicos have been found using slave labour on their cattle ranches - so that some of the men who got the law postponed are those who personally benefit from the delay."
Attempts to tackle slave labour have been hindered by the lawlessness of the territories involved, and the puny punishments handed out.
The ILO employed five researchers to travel to the remote parts of Brazil. Ms Rocha says it was impossible to read the reports of government inspectors "without feeling profoundly ashamed that in the 21st century so many Brazilians are being treated not like animals, but worse than animals". She describes how slave workers live under plastic sheets without sanitation, clearing the forest for soya bean plantations and cattle. In the charcoal smelters they work without protective clothing in extreme heat.
"They work from dawn till dusk, sometimes seven days a week. They have been recruited with the promise of good pay, but they find themselves trapped into debt."
The lack of transport in the remote areas makes it impossible to leave. The presence of armed men who threaten the workers, beat them up if they try to escape, and sometimes hunt them down was recorded by inspectors.
In the worst area, the south Para, 534 rural workers were recorded as killed in the 30 years to 2001, 26 times the national homicide average, but many more simply disappear.
The report says the only way slavery will disappear is if everyone regards it as "a national outrage", and ranches and businesses are confiscated as a punishment. Every worker should be registered, given documents and educated about their rights.
The US customs said there was no one who was familiar with the problem available to comment.