New Delhi, Over a hundred Indian workers at a shipyard in a small American town on the Gulf of Mexico lodged a dramatic protest against inhuman living and working conditions on Thursday, singing “We Shall Overcome”, and tossing their hard hats in the air.

The workers, hired from India in 2006 to tide over a labour shortage in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that killed over 1,800 on the Gulf coast in August 2005, said they were made to live “like pigs in a cage” in a “work camp” run by their employer, marine fabrication company Signal International, in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

The workers said an earlier attempt at protest had been ruthlessly muzzled, prompting a worker to attempt suicide. The worker had been sacked and police had been called in to control the situation. The protesters said they had been lured with promises of permanent US residency into a “human trafficking ring” run by Signal International.