China rocked by child slavery scandal
Sunday, 17 June 2007.
Regional party bosses and police under fire as hundreds of slaves – including children – are released from Shanxi and Henan ’hell holes’
Vincent Kolo, Beijing
We are used to hearing about slave labour in China’s sweatshop industries. But the major story in China in recent days is about actual slavery in dozens of small brick works and mines in the provinces of Shanxi and Henan. More than 1,000 people, many children, have been forced into slavery as a result of a brutal human trafficking ring that has shocked the whole country.
As of Sunday 17 June, 568 people including children and the mentally handicapped had been freed from slavery in brick kilns and illegal mines, according to the New China (Xinhua) news agency. Police had made 250 arrests in raids on thousands of illegal sites in the two province and said the number of children forced to work in this way could rise to more than 1,000.
Shocking TV footage
News reports described the freed workers, including one child of just eight years, as having been beaten, nearly starved and forced to work long hours, allegedly with the involvement of police and local officials. A Henan TV broadcast showed released workers, many too feeble or ill to walk. Most had been severely beaten and none had been paid.
”They had all been hit by bricks and sticks. Seven of them were badly injured, with broken legs and such,” the TV commentator said.
Other harrowing TV images showed rescued child slaves, some who still wearing the school uniforms they had on when they were kidnapped. Many of the children had festering wounds, apparently from burns. The children described how they were guarded by dogs and some of their number had been beaten to death by their guards.
As the scandal grew, China’s president Hu Jintao and premier, Wen Jiabao, intervened to call for urgent efforts to trace hundreds more boys and young men still missing.
Parent activism and police passivity
The story broke as a result of desperate and courageous parents, who came together to try to track down and free their children, when police and other authorities refused to act. A group of 400 parents posted a letter on the internet pleading for official attention to their plight. This led to the story being picked up by news agencies. In one case, parents accompanied by TV crews entered a brick kiln and succeeded in freeing their children, while police refused to intervene.
Even in a country like China where confidence in the police force is low – police brutality is a common cause of social unrest – police misconduct in this case has aroused massive indignation. Parents of missing children have reported that police refused to intervene even when given the whereabouts of child slaves. One mother told how, outside the very factory where her child was incarcerated, police demanded a bribe before proceeding. Reports have surfaced this week of official labour inspectors taking children from freshly closed brick works and selling them to other factories.
The media storm, however, led to a massive police operation, involving a reported 35,000 police officers carrying out raids in the two provinces.
Local officials and Communist Party members are of course implicated in the scandal. Commentators say the slave trade in the provinces has possibly been going on for years – an impossibility without a degree of official complicity.
Xinhua reported that the local Communist Party chief in one Shanxi town at the centre of the scandal was under investigation along with county-level officials and police suspected of collusion with kiln and mine owners. The party chief’s son owned the brick kiln where 32 slaves were freed last week.
”How could officials in the area have connived with such audacious and appalling behaviour to allow this situation to arise under the very eyes?” the party mouthpiece, People's Daily, asked.
One answer was provided, ironically, by the US-based Bloomberg news agency: ”The pursuit of profit in the world’s fastest-growing major economy has given rise to dangerous, and sometimes inhumane, working conditions in the less-developed hinterlands.”
According to Liu Cheng, a professor of labour law at Shanghai Normal University, the scandal ”seems like a typical example of a government-business alliance... Forced labour and child labour in China are illegal, but some local governments don’t care too much.”
Vincent Kolo, Beijing
We are used to hearing about slave labour in China’s sweatshop industries. But the major story in China in recent days is about actual slavery in dozens of small brick works and mines in the provinces of Shanxi and Henan. More than 1,000 people, many children, have been forced into slavery as a result of a brutal human trafficking ring that has shocked the whole country.
As of Sunday 17 June, 568 people including children and the mentally handicapped had been freed from slavery in brick kilns and illegal mines, according to the New China (Xinhua) news agency. Police had made 250 arrests in raids on thousands of illegal sites in the two province and said the number of children forced to work in this way could rise to more than 1,000.
Shocking TV footage
News reports described the freed workers, including one child of just eight years, as having been beaten, nearly starved and forced to work long hours, allegedly with the involvement of police and local officials. A Henan TV broadcast showed released workers, many too feeble or ill to walk. Most had been severely beaten and none had been paid.
”They had all been hit by bricks and sticks. Seven of them were badly injured, with broken legs and such,” the TV commentator said.
Other harrowing TV images showed rescued child slaves, some who still wearing the school uniforms they had on when they were kidnapped. Many of the children had festering wounds, apparently from burns. The children described how they were guarded by dogs and some of their number had been beaten to death by their guards.
As the scandal grew, China’s president Hu Jintao and premier, Wen Jiabao, intervened to call for urgent efforts to trace hundreds more boys and young men still missing.
Parent activism and police passivity
The story broke as a result of desperate and courageous parents, who came together to try to track down and free their children, when police and other authorities refused to act. A group of 400 parents posted a letter on the internet pleading for official attention to their plight. This led to the story being picked up by news agencies. In one case, parents accompanied by TV crews entered a brick kiln and succeeded in freeing their children, while police refused to intervene.
Even in a country like China where confidence in the police force is low – police brutality is a common cause of social unrest – police misconduct in this case has aroused massive indignation. Parents of missing children have reported that police refused to intervene even when given the whereabouts of child slaves. One mother told how, outside the very factory where her child was incarcerated, police demanded a bribe before proceeding. Reports have surfaced this week of official labour inspectors taking children from freshly closed brick works and selling them to other factories.
The media storm, however, led to a massive police operation, involving a reported 35,000 police officers carrying out raids in the two provinces.
Local officials and Communist Party members are of course implicated in the scandal. Commentators say the slave trade in the provinces has possibly been going on for years – an impossibility without a degree of official complicity.
Xinhua reported that the local Communist Party chief in one Shanxi town at the centre of the scandal was under investigation along with county-level officials and police suspected of collusion with kiln and mine owners. The party chief’s son owned the brick kiln where 32 slaves were freed last week.
”How could officials in the area have connived with such audacious and appalling behaviour to allow this situation to arise under the very eyes?” the party mouthpiece, People's Daily, asked.
One answer was provided, ironically, by the US-based Bloomberg news agency: ”The pursuit of profit in the world’s fastest-growing major economy has given rise to dangerous, and sometimes inhumane, working conditions in the less-developed hinterlands.”
According to Liu Cheng, a professor of labour law at Shanghai Normal University, the scandal ”seems like a typical example of a government-business alliance... Forced labour and child labour in China are illegal, but some local governments don’t care too much.”
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