http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/16/germany-ikea-idUSL5E8MG8U620121116 IKEA apologises for use of East German prison labour

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Fri Nov 16, 2012 11:10am EST

* IKEA apologises for using forced labour in East Germany

* Largest furniture retailer unveils results of probe

* Former prisoners tell of ordeals, hope for compensation

By Stephen Brown

BERLIN, Nov 16 (Reuters) - IKEA apologised on Friday for using the forced labour of political prisoners in communist East Germany to make some of its furniture during the 1980s.

Victims of the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) Stasi secret police watched as a senior executive of the Swedish giant acknowledged for the first time that it had failed to act when rumours of prison labour emerged.

"Despite IKEA's attempts in the 1980s to prevent the use of political prisoners in making its products in the GDR, political prisoners were used. As the representative of IKEA in Germany, I offer my deepest regrets to the victims," said Peter Betzel, the company's country manager.

Embarrassed by media reports IKEA, the world's largest furniture retailer, launched an internal investigation a year ago into whether it had used forced labour in the GDR until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

It handed the investigation to auditors Ernst & Young in May to ensure greater objectivity.

The presentation of the report took place a few metres from Checkpoint Charlie, one of the landmarks of the division of Berlin during the Cold War, where former Stasi prisoners said they hoped the study would lead to financial compensation.

"It's not about getting compensation just from IKEA but from all the companies who played a role in this," said 62-year-old Rainer Wagner. IKEA did not touch on the issue of compensation although it said it would consider funding further research into the whole issue of forced labour.

Wagner was jailed after attempting to flee the GDR in 1966 and was forced to work in a factory producing gas meters. Some of the firms involved were privatised after reunification, he said.

CHEAP LABOUR

Other former prisoners told of being thrown into isolation cells and fed on punishment rations for failing to reach productivity targets at factories working for Western companies, including IKEA and other household names.

Thousands of firms from then-West Germany and other Western countries subcontracted production to state-controlled firms behind the Iron Curtain, attracted by the low labour costs.

IKEA's investigation was prompted by Swedish and German news media reports that included interviews with former Stasi prison inmates. Some reports said there was evidence of the use of forced labour as early as 1984.

The auditors deployed forensic investigators, compliance experts, historians and journalists to study tens of thousands of documents from Stasi and IKEA company archives, and interviewed hundreds of IKEA staff and former GDR prisoners.

The investigators also looked into media reports that IKEA had produced furniture in communist Cuba using the forced labour of political prisoners. But they found this affected only a sample of sofas, which did not meet IKEA's quality standards.

The head of the present-day German federal authority charged with curating the Stasi's archives and investigating its crimes, Roland Jahn, said it was yet to be seen whether IKEA's probe went far enough.

IKEA has 338 stores in 40 countries. Founder Ingvar Kamprad, an 86-year-old billionaire who lives in Switzerland, still controls the group with his family and is no stranger to controversy, having been involved with a Swedish fascist group in the 1940s.

IKEA got into hot water this year for spying on employees in France and air-brushing women out of catalogues meant for Saudi Arabia. (Reporting by Stephen Brown, editing by Gareth Jones and Robert Woodward)

Founder Ingvar Kamprad, an 86-year-old billionaire who lives in Switzerland, still controls the group with his family and is no stranger to controversy, having been involved with a Swedish fascist group in the 1940s
They always give this bloke a free pass for some reason. I would not call 1980 (Mosley's funeral) the "forties" or the European Social Movement a teenage fling.This mysterious Sudeten German with a forty year involvement with neo fascists and neo nazis is always given a pass by the mainstream media

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g5Ig5mIkkqr0P5qPMGN8W79vHK-w?docId=3726765050c747299541d60c952d3817 Sign in

IKEA regrets use of forced labor in East Germany

By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press – 41 minutes ago

BERLIN (AP) — Swedish furniture giant IKEA expressed regret Friday that it benefited from the use of forced prison labor by some of its suppliers in communist East Germany more than two decades ago.

The company released an independent report showing that East German prisoners, among them many political dissidents, were involved in the manufacture of goods supplied to IKEA between 25 and 30 years ago.

The report concluded that IKEA managers were aware of the possibility that prisoners would be used in the manufacture of its products and took some measures to prevent this, but they were insufficient.

"We deeply regret that this could happen," Jeanette Skjelmose, an IKEA manager, said in a statement. "The use of political prisoners for manufacturing was at no point accepted by IKEA."

But she added that "at the time we didn't have the well-developed control system that we have today and we clearly did too little to prevent such production methods."

IKEA asked auditors Ernst & Young in June to look into allegations aired earlier this year by a Swedish television documentary, but first raised by a human rights group in 1982.

Rainer Wagner, chairman of the victims' group UOKG, said IKEA was just one of many companies that benefited from the use of forced prison labor in East Germany from the 1960s to 1980s.

"IKEA is only the tip of the iceberg," he told The Associated Press in an interview earlier this week.

Wagner said he hoped that IKEA and others would consider compensating former prisoners, many of whom carry psychological and physical scars from arduous labor they were forced to do.

"IKEA has taken the lead on this, for which we are very grateful," he told a news conference in Berlin, where the findings of the report were presented.

According to historians, forced labor was a widespread phenomenon in East Germany, which desperately needed hard Western currency to support its planned economy. The prison labor is estimated to have cost a tenth of what it would have cost in the west.

Some 23 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, experts are still trying to understand the full extent of the regime's exploitation of its people.

Alexander Arnold, who was imprisoned in Naumburg in the early 1980s, said prisoners who failed to meet a quota were punished.

"If one delivered less than 80 percent of the expected standard, one was accused of sabotage," he said.

Anita Gossler, a campaigner and former prisoner, said inmates of East Germany's notorious Hoheneck prison for women were forced to sew bedclothes destined for foreign companies.

"There were three shifts each day," she said. "You couldn't refuse. If you did you were locked in a dark cell with bread and soup for at least three days." Until 1980 prisoners also risked being sent to the 'water room,' where they had to stand knee-deep in cold water for hours.

Gossler said one inmate once managed to hide a note in a bed cover that was later discovered by an IKEA customer in the west — a rare piece of evidence of forced labor at the time.

Peter Betzel, the head of IKEA Germany, said the company would continue to support efforts to investigate the use of prisoners in East Germany.

Today, he said, "we can exclude with almost 100 percent certainty that such things as happened in East Germany happen elsewhere."

IKEA has over 300 stores worldwide, racking up sales of €26 billion ($33.14 billion) last year, according to its website.

The company has been embroiled in controversy in the past. A book published last year claimed IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad joined the Swedish Nazi party in 1943 when he was 17 and remained in contact with Nazi sympathizers until at least 1950.

The allegations by respected Swedish author and journalist Elisabeth Asbrink went beyond what Kamprad had previously acknowledged in a 1988 book about his life. At the time, he asked for forgiveness for his youthful "stupidity.

Stalisland - Germany - YouTube

Secret Files: How shredded Stasi files are reconstructed | People & Politics - YouTube

Founder Ingvar Kamprad, an 86-year-old billionaire who lives in Switzerland, still controls the group with his family and is no stranger to controversy, having been involved with a Swedish fascist group in the 1940s
They always give this bloke a free pass for some reason. I would not call 1980 (Mosley's funeral) the "forties" or the European Social Movement a teenage fling.This mysterious Sudeten German with a forty year involvement with neo fascists and neo nazis is always given a pass by the mainstream mediaI wonder why?