[Marxism] China Rescues 'Slave' Workers

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

June 16, 2007 

China Rescues 'Slave' Workers
Adults, Children Saved
>From Brutal Conditions;
Sign of Growth's Abuses
By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
June 16, 2007; Page A4
WALL STREET JOURNAL


SHANGHAI -- Chinese authorities said they rescued more than 500
people, including dozens of children, from "slave labor" in brick
kilns and coal mines, illustrating the sometimes severe abuses
spawned by China's breakneck economic development.

More than 45,000 police have fanned out across Henan and Shanxi
provinces to crack down on instances of forced labor. The
investigation was prompted, in part, by an Internet campaign mounted
by hundreds of parents who said their children have been kidnapped
and sold to brickyard owners.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
FORCED LABOR

. The News: Chinese police freed hundreds of forced laborers,
including dozens of children.

. The Trigger: An online campaign by parents who say their children
were kidnapped for work at brick kilns and coal mines apparently
prompted the government crackdown.

. What's at Stake: The Chinese government is trying to polish its
image with its own people and the world in the run-up to the 2008
Olympics in Beijing.Revelations about the extent of the abuses, which
have received wide coverage in state-owned newspapers and on
television news, come at a sensitive time for China's Communist Party
leaders, who are looking to polish the country's international image
ahead of next year's Olympic Games in Beijing.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is the second time child labor has emerged as a national issue
in a week. Last weekend, unions and human-rights groups alleged that
some Olympic merchandise is being made by underpaid, underage
workers. The U.S. State Department, in its annual report on human
trafficking and forced labor this week, listed China on its "watch
list," saying Beijing isn't doing enough to stamp out the practices.

Xinhua, the government-run news agency, reported Friday that workers,
some of them children, had been kidnapped or lured to work at the
brick kilns with false promises and then held against their will and
forced to work long hours without pay or adequate food. More than 150
people have been arrested.

Chai Wei, a 38-year-old father from Henan, says his 17-year-old
mentally handicapped son was kidnapped in April while playing
outside. Mr. Chai returned Thursday from a trip to Shanxi with other
parents searching brickyards for their missing children.

"We contacted the local police, but they are protecting the
brick-kiln owners," Mr. Chai says. "They wouldn't help us."

It wasn't Mr. Chai's first trip to mountainous Shanxi to look for his
son. After a worker reported seeing his son at a brick kiln in a town
called Shangxin, Mr. Chai traveled seven hours by train in an effort
to bring his son home. "But I didn't find him. They must have sent
him somewhere else," he says.

Han Dongfeng, a Hong Kong-based labor-rights activist and founder of
the China Labor Bulletin, says that forced labor has been a problem
for more than a decade, especially in brick kilns, coal mines and
small garment factories. "People think they can do anything, legal or
illegal, to make money," he says.

Rescued workers in Shanxi province

Mr. Han credits the online campaign by the parents of missing
children with prompting the authorities to take action on an issue
long swept under the rug.

The Communist Party's main national newspaper, People's Daily,
carried a lengthy article Friday saying that police had stumbled by
accident on slave workers at a brick kiln owned by the son of a
village Communist Party boss in Shanxi province at the end of May.

The party official's son, Wang Binbin, was quoted by People's Daily
as saying he began employing workers provided by human traffickers
after falling into debt and being unable to afford to pay locally
recruited laborers. Workers were severely beaten when the pace of
their work slowed, the report said.

Mr. Wang and two others were arrested and 31 workers freed by the
police in that case. But it appears to have been the online outcry by
parents -- through bulletin and message boards -- that led to a
widening crackdown over the past two weeks.

China's leaders, worried about public unease with the widening gap
between China's haves and have-nots, have been trying to position
themselves increasingly as the champions of the country's less
well-off. So they are especially eager to be seen as taking strong
measures to tackle wrongdoing, observers say.

The government is also concerned about its appearance in the run-up
to the Olympics, when a surge in foreign media coverage is likely to
create an image of China in the world's mind that will persist for
years afterward.

Last weekend, PlayFair 2008, an alliance of global trade unions and
nongovernmental organizations, charged that workers making some
Olympic merchandise were being mistreated. Since the report was
issued, the government and the Beijing Olympic organizing committee
have scrambled to respond. On Wednesday, Chen Feng, the deputy
director of the marketing department of the Beijing Organizing
Committee for the Olympic Games, said at a news conference that, "if
we find any problems, we will severely punish those violators."

The municipal government of Dongguan, a southern city where one of
the factories cited by the activists is located, said that the plant
did in fact employ children under the age of 16, but that they hadn't
worked on Olympics-related products.

--Tang Hanting and Ellen Zhu contributed to this article.

Write to Gordon Fairclough at gordon.fairclough@xxxxxxxx


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