China Frees 30 Disabled Slaves

By: EW News Desk Team   Date: 8 September 2011

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08 September 2011

 In a latest case of labour abuse, China said that they have rescued 30 people who had been forced to work as slaves at an illegal brick factory in Henan in central China. Some of the rescued workers have disabilities so severe that the Chinese authorities are finding it hard to establish their identities.

The Chinese state media said on Wednesday that some of the victims, who were regularly abused, had toiled for more than seven years without any pay. Henan province, where the scandal originated, is already at the heart of a massive slavery scandal in 2007.

"These 30 people are mentally disabled, and were taken from their home town and tricked into working," a spokesman for the provincial police, surnamed Zhang, told AFP.

"In that case, they are being sheltered by the departments that rescued them," Zhang said.

The official China Daily newspaper, quoting a television channel that exposed the scandal, said the victims were mostly abducted and sold to factory bosses for 300 to 500 yuan (US$47 to US$78). 

A police officer quoted by state media said that one factory supervisor accused of whipping the workers was just 14 years old.

This case coming out of China underscores the continuous efforts and difficulty faced by the Chinese government in eliminating slave labor in the world's second-largest economy, where standards of living are generally improving. The weakest in Chinese society, including those with mental disabilities, can be particularly vulnerable due to a lack of services.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the problem is particularly acute in the poor rural hinterlands of Henan and elsewhere in China, with many young people leaving their hometowns in search of work. In 2007, after a major push in which 45,000 police had fanned out across Henan and nearby Shanxi provinces in search of enslaved workers, authorities said they rescued more than 500 people from illegal brick kilns and coal mines.

Although no official numbers have been released on how many were enslaved, a parliamentary investigation revealed that some 53,000 migrant workers had been employed in over 2,000 illegal brick factories in Shanxi alone. 

"China was liberated 60 years ago," wrote a Chinese netizen on Weibo, China's popular microblogging site, borrowing a term often used by the government to describe the Communist Party's rise to power. "But this place was just liberated today."


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