Jörg Dornau signed a contract in 2020 with the local government in a district near the Belarus border to Lithuania to start onion cultivation there.
He promised 45 new job opportunities outside the city of Lida. But they seem to have gone to political prisoners who were imprisoned after the protests against dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko in the wake of the rigged presidential election in the autumn of 2020.
One of the prisoners who was forced to work on the farm was Andrej, who was imprisoned after liking a post on social media. He tells the independent Belarusian news site Reform.news, which exposed the prisoner exploitation, that he received five euros per working day – if he was considered to have worked well enough.
The working day started with breakfast at 7 am and lasted for eleven hours without any more food until 6 pm in the evening.
Jörg Dornau visited the facility at least once during the time Andrej worked there.
I saw him, a tall, bald man, says Andrej, giving a precise description of Dornau according to Politico.
He came in his German-registered car. He came into the shed where we sorted onions with employed workers.
The politician received criticism when his business dealings in Belarus became known, and in August, he was fined the equivalent of 235,000 kronor by his parliament for not having disclosed them.
Today, 1,324 political prisoners are imprisoned in Belarus, according to the human rights organization Vjasna's figures. Andrej, who was imprisoned for 15 days in February, is no longer one of them.
About working in Jörg Dornau's onion farm, he has nothing positive to say, except for one thing:
The onions were good.
