Four foreign agricultural workers were burned alive in a car in the Italian town of Amendolara - a scene so brutal it is hard to put into words. Two Pakistani nationals have been arrested as suspects. Only one survived, having smashed a window and escaped - and is now the key witness.

According to security camera footage near a petrol station, two men blocked the doors from the outside while flammable liquid was poured into the car from behind. The vehicle then burst into flames, and the attackers fled. The black column of smoke was visible for kilometres. Three of the victims were Afghans, one a Pakistani.

But the most harrowing part is the motive - and the context behind it. The workers had been employed at a strawberry farm since 20 April, driven each day by two Pakistani intermediaries. Initially paid in cash, they were then promised 45 euros a day - which they never received. For the transport, meanwhile, they were charged 5 euros a day.

„They gave us no money. They gave food, they gave a roof, but money - no," the survivor said. The dispute, reportedly, broke out precisely over the charge for transport that the workers refused to pay. He described the situation without dressing it up: „This is mafia, mafia... Pakistani mobsters."

The investigation focuses on conflicts between groups of migrant workers in the plains of Sibari and Metaponto. In recent months, 14 arson attacks on vehicles linked to agricultural workers have been recorded. The competition is for jobs, permits, housing and intermediaries - who are often migrants themselves.

And here lies the darkest lesson. This is not a story of „foreigners against Italians" - it is a story of the most vulnerable exploiting each other, while the system that brought them there looks away. The Europe that lives off the cheap harvest of others' hands rarely wants to see what happens in the field once the cameras go dark. The Balkans send their own people to the same shelves - how many of them vanish in the same silence?