China announces arrests in slave scandal

By Christopher Bodeen,  Associated Press

BEIJING – China announced more arrests and a provincial governor apologized Friday as the government stepped up efforts to try to show it was responding to a growing slave labor scandal.

Amid the host of new revelations, media said slavery ringleaders were hiding child laborers and charging ransoms for their release. Many had been abducted from train stations and sold for as little as $65 to illegal brick kilns.

The scandal shows little sign of abating, despite repeated calls for investigations by top leaders and apparent attempts to limit additional coverage in state media. With Internet users and some media outlets expressing outrage, Premier Wen Jiabao could see his reputation tarnished for failing to follow through on his public image as defender of the underprivileged.

Early Friday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported the arrests of two labor bureau officials for abetting slave labor operations in brick kilns in Shanxi province.

The pair are the first officials arrested in connection with the enslaving of hundreds of children and adults at brick factories where they were forced to work long hours in grueling conditions without pay.

Police in Shanxi said 55 people were being investigated in 15 separate cases of slavery at brick kilns. Of those, 35 were in detention with the other 20 on the run, according to Xinhua. Charges against them were not given.

However, Sun Baoshu, a vice chairman of the official trade union federation, said authorities were focusing on crimes of forced labor, illegal detention, assault and forced child labor.

Xinhua identified the two arrested officials as the head of the labor inspection team in Yongji district of Shanxi province, who was charged with dereliction of duty, and one of his officers, charged with abuse of power.

It said the two officials were responsible for abducting an underaged laborer who had been released from a kiln and was being transported home. They then sent the boy to another kiln where he was again forced into slavery, it said.

Sun, the union official, identified the victim in that case as a 17-year-old boy surnamed “Zhu” from Henan province neighboring Shanxi. The Associated Press this week interviewed a father in Henan Province, Zhu Guoxing, who said his son had undergone a similar experience, although it could not be confirmed whether the two were the same individuals.

The scandal that has brewed on the Internet and in state media prompted an extraordinary self-criticism this week from Shanxi Governor Yu Youjun, making him the first high-ranking official to perform a potentially career-damaging act of contrition in relation to the case.

That came during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday presided over by Wen, who has built his public image on concern for the welfare of ordinary Chinese. Wen has ordered a thorough probe and punishment of kiln owners and officials who abetted their activities.

On Friday, Yu went still further, offering a public apology and accepting blame for the scandal.

“I feel … heart-stricken over the scandal. On behalf of the provincial government, I apologize to the victims and their families, as well as to all the people in Shanxi,” Yu said, according to Xinhua.

Since the scandal broke last month, more than 8,000 kilns and small coal mines in Shanxi and Henan provinces have been raided, with 591 workers freed, including 51 children, according to state media.

Shanxi police said 359 people had been freed in the province, 12 of whom were underage, while the ages of nine others were being checked, according to Xinhua.

About 160 suspected kiln bosses have been detained in the two provinces, and at least one village-level Communist Party secretary expelled from the party after his son was found to be operating a kiln where 31 slaves were found laboring under extraordinarily cruel conditions.

Workers, including small children, were kidnapped or lured with false promises of well-paying jobs by recruiters at train and bus stations. Sold on to kiln owners, they were beaten, starved and forced to haul bricks for up to 20 hours per day for no pay. Many of those rescued showed serious injuries from burns and beatings.

Investigations have been spearheaded largely by parents searching the mountains of southern Shanxi for missing sons. One group claiming to represent 400 fathers circulated an open letter online saying 1,000 children were being held and accusing officials of ignoring or obstructing their searches.

However, reports Friday said some parents had been contacted by their abducted sons who told them they would be released on payment of a ransom.

The official China Daily newspaper said a family surnamed Yuan said their son told them the kiln boss was demanding $4,600 for his release. It said other operators had been tipped off to raids and shifted their slave laborers to remote hiding places.

China bans dyed hair, smoking for police

BEIJING – No more brightly dyed hair, flashy jewelry or smoking in public for China’s police while they’re in uniform, state media reported Thursday.

Xinhua News Agency said repeat offenders would be fired under new rules from the Ministry of Public Security.

Chinese paramilitary policeman is helped by a colleague in Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, March 2007. China’s police officers could face the sack if they dye their hair unusual colours, wear jewellery or smoke while on duty as part of a tough new campaign to sharpen up their image.(AFP/File/Teh Eng Koon)

The report said officers who arrive for work with colored hair will be ordered to return it to its original color, while necklaces and rings will be banned.

“Minor offenders will be lectured and asked to mend their ways,” Xinhua quoted the regulations as saying. “Those who repeatedly break the rules or whose behavior has a detrimental impact could be sacked.”

Female officers also are banned from “wearing scarves and having varnished fingernails.”

“Police officers in uniform must not smoke in public places, drink, or go to entertainment venues for personal reasons,” the regulations say.

Xinhua said poor police behavior has been one of the biggest complaints in cities such as the capital, Beijing.

The report did not mention the 2008 Summer Olympics, but Beijing residents have been repeatedly told to stop spitting and to wait patiently in lines to improve the city’s image ahead of the Games.

China: Hundreds Of Slaves Freed; Human Trafficking Uncovered

By Vivian Wai-yin Kwok
Forbes.com
June 18, 2007

Hong Kong-One of the great advantages of China in the world market has been cheap labor. Now the country is in the grips of a scandal over the worst extreme that can reach — slavery.

In a wave of raids over the past week, Chinese police have freed more than 550 people, including children and the mentally handicapped, who were allegedly forced to work against their will in brick kilns and mines in Henan and Shanxi provinces in inhumane conditions, according to the state-controlled Xinhua News.

File picture shows migrant workers carrying bricks at a site on the outskirts of Shanghai. Up to 1,000 people, many of them young children, have been forced to work as slaves in a brutal human trafficking ring in China that has shocked and outraged the nation, police said Friday(AFP/File/Liu Jin)
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Local government officials and Communist Party members have been implicated in the human-trafficking scandal, which has seen 168 arrested and shocked the nation.

In a four-day operation that ended last Tuesday, more than 35,000 police were dispatched to raid 7,500 kilns in Henan Province. Police said Thursday that they had rescued 217 people, including 29 children. Meanwhile, more than 350 people, including 22 children, were freed from brick works and coal mines in Shanxi in a sweep by more than 20,000 police there.

Many of the slaves were reportedly kidnapped at bus stops and the train station in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province, or lured by false promises of good jobs. The human traffickers took them to northern Henan and the neighboring province of Shanxi, where they were sold for 500 yuan ($65) each, mainland media reported.

Some of the slaves were reportedly forced to work at least 15 hours a day and sleep on wet floors, with only buns to eat. They were kept under control with the help of guard dogs.

BBC supplied this photo during China’s 2007 slave scandal in the brick making industry

The human trafficking was exposed due to the efforts of thousands of parents in Henan province who have been desperately looking for their missing children over the past year.

Their case gained media attention after an open letter was posted online signed by a group of 400 fathers appealing for help in tracking their missing sons, who they believed were sold to kiln bosses.

The fathers accused Henan and Shanxi authorities of ignoring them or even protecting the kilns and human traffickers.

In May, local newspapers and TV stations reported on the abuse of children held captive at brick kilns and their parents’ distress.

In particular the story of Yang Aizhi, a 46-year-old mother who had been hunting for her 16-year-old son since March 8, touched a nerve.

Yang told Southern Weekly, a Guangzhou-based newspaper, that she had gone to more than 100 kilns in Shanxi in an unsuccessful search for her child, finding countless others, some in school uniforms, being held in squalid conditions.

Yang’s story, among others, forced action from the highest levels in China, with President Hu Jintao and other national leaders ordering an investigation.

The central government’s control is looser in less-developed provinces like Henan and Shanxi. In Shanxi, local officials are notorious for protecting illegal coal mines. Last year, 4,746 workers died in coal mine accidents, most of them in Shanxi.

Wang Dongji, a Communist Party branch secretary at a village in Shanxi, was being investigated by authorities after his son was found to be an owner of a kiln where 32 people were starved, beaten and forced to work 14 hours or more a day, Xinhua reported.

The foreman of that kiln, who was arrested Saturday, refused to accept responsibility for the harsh treatment of his workers, which reportedly led to the death of a mentally impaired man and serious injuries to 20 others.

“I felt it was a fairly small thing, hitting and swearing at the workers and not giving them wages,” said Heng Tinghan, according to the Shiyan Evening News.

The transition to a free market in China has come with mounting reports of abuse of labor. Just last week, the government was embarassed by allegations that children as young as 12 were being used to make souvenirs for the Olympic Games. (See: ” Olympic Labor Abuse Charges Make Waves“)

The Associated Press contributed to this story

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Hu Xiaojiao shows a photo of her missing son, whom she says in in forced labour in a Chinese brick kiln, whilst talking to AFP, November 7, 2009, in a room in the city of Zhengzhou. (Photo: Peter Parks / AFP / Getty Images)

By Austin Ramzy
September 8, 2011
Time Magazine

Four years after China’s last major slave labor scandal, a group of disabled  men has been freed from a brick kiln in the central province of Henan after an  investigation by an undercover television reporter. Some of the men had been  forced to work for years without pay, enduring beatings and poor food and living  conditions, the state-run China Daily reported.  The abuses were uncovered by Cui Songwang, a reporter for a Zhengzhou television  station, who hung around a train station posing as a disabled man for two days  until he was kidnapped and sold to a kiln manager for 500 yuan (about $75). Cui  said he was forced to work for three hours, beaten and deprived of water before  he managed to escape and report the case to police. (Chinese report here.)

The abuses recall another slave scandal, this time centered at brick kilns in  Shanxi, also involving disabled men kidnapped from railroad stations in Henan  who were also sold on for 500 yuan. That case was uncovered in 2007, after  parents of the missing took their pleas to the Internet. Looking at my  colleague’s blog  post from then, it’s striking how little has changed. After the 2007 case  grabbed the attention of the Chinese leadership, a massive investigation was  launched, and hundreds of people were found to be doing forced labor in brick  kilns, coal mines and foundries.

Despite the attention those cases received, the  problem has persisted, exacerbated by corruption, lax law enforcement and a  shortage of services for disabled people that leaves many to get by on their  own. The China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based NGO, points  out that in 2008 a forced labor scandal was covered in the manufacturing hub  of Dongguan, where hundreds of teenagers from the interior were forced to work  for little or no pay. In December a newspaper in China’s northwestern Xinjiang  region uncovered a factory that was holding developmentally disabled slave  workers who had been sold by a shelter in Sichuan. The couple who ran the shelter were accused of earning $450,000 off the sales of more than 130 disabled people to mines,  kilns and factories.

After the 2007 case there were disturbing reports (detailed again here by CLB) that some of the freed slaves never made it home, that their families  couldn’t be found, that they fled protective custody, or in one case, a  14-year-old boy was sold back to another brickyard by labor officials charged  with caring for him, according to a Henan Television story. Once again officials  are reporting difficulties identifying some of the recently freed slave laborers. One hopes  that this time they all find a safe home.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2011/09/08/another-slavery-scandal-uncovered-in-central-china/#ixzz2VR5iEsG3

Austin Ramzy has been a Beijing correspondent for TIME since 2007.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2011/09/08/another-slavery-scandal-uncovered-in-central-china/#ixzz2VR5ruUBy