A group representing farmworkers in the northwestern town of Saluzzo announced a strike on Thursday, August 4 to demand more rights and to protest against the death last month of a migrant worker.

The organization "Enough Is Enough - braccianti in lotta a Saluzzo," (Workers' struggle in Saluzzo) near the city of Cuneo, is calling for "contracts, housing and documents for all" as well as "justice for workers killed on the job like Moussa Dembele."

Dembele died on July 11 in an accident inside a stable in Revello (Cuneo). Last year, the group organized a protest in Saluzzo to demand more rights for African seasonal workers who travel to the city every year in search of a job in the local fruit production district.

'Justice for Moussa'

"Moussa," organizers said, "had a residence permit that had been blocked for over a year and he was forced as a consequence to take on an unstable and unsafe job."

They went on to say that the demonstration is "for him and for the other farmhands who died or disappeared from the fields over the past few weeks, from Caserta to Ragusa. We are looking for answers from those who have a great responsibility for these deaths - the masters [employers] and institutions," they concluded.

Moussa Dembele, a 30-year-old from Mali, was crushed to death by an agricultural machine in the area of San Firmino in the north of Italy.