The study indicates that political and criminal prisoners were involved in manufacturing for Ikea suppliers. It also said that Ikea representatives at the time knew that political prisoners were possibly used. In the past Ikea had given contracts to the East German government.
Former political prisoners of the Stasi, the feared secret police, said they worked on the furniture, leading to Ikea commissioning the Ernst & Young report in May this year. Those former prisoners may now expect compensation.
Rainer Wagner, chairman of the victims‘ group UOKG, has previously said that Ikea was just one of many companies that benefited from the use of forced prison labor in the former GDR from the 1960s to 1980s.
The group is campaigning for compensation for many former prisoners, whom they say carry psychological and physical scars from the labor they were forced to do.
The company said that although it took steps to try to ensure that prisoners were not used in production, “it is now clear that these measures were not effective enough”.
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Park Sae-jin
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