SAO PAULO, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- More than 4,600 people forced into slavery on farms in Brazil were released in government raids in 2008, the Brazilian Labor Ministry says.
The ministry's records state its anti-slavery task force and federal police had raided 255 remote ranches and plantations over the course of the year in a continuing crackdown on so-called debt slavery.
Britain's The Guardian reported Saturday that many of the workers came from impoverished areas of northeast Brazil and were forced to work in squalid conditions to pay off debts for food and housing.
Human rights activists say the practice continues in remote agricultural regions despite the government's efforts to eradicate it.
"The federal government has acted -- but having slave labor in a country where the wealth is so evident is a very painful contradiction," said Leonardo Sakamoto, head of the non-governmental organization Reporter Brasil.
