Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 20, 2007 22:36:44 GMT -6
Below is an article from the International Herald Tribune on Chinese child & slave labor.
Child slave labor revelations sweeping China
By Howard W. French
"SHANGHAI: Su Jinduo and Su Jinpeng, brother and sister, were traveling home by bus from a vacation visit to Qingdao during the Chinese New Year when they disappeared.
Cheated out of their money when they sought to buy a ticket for the final leg of their journey home, they were taken in by a woman who offered them warm shelter and a meal on a cold winter night, and then later a chance to earn enough money to pay their fare by helping her sell fruit.
The next thing they knew they were being loaded onto a minibus with several other children and taken to a factory in the next province, where they were pressed into service making bricks. Several days later, the boy, who is 16, escaped along with another boy and managed to reach home, enabling his father to rescue his 18-year-old sister a few days later.
This story is one of hundreds like it that have swept China in recent days in an unfolding labor abuse scandal that involves the kidnapping in central China of hundreds of children, and perhaps more, some reportedly as young as 8, who have been forced to work under brutal conditions - scantily clothed, unpaid and often fed little more than water and steamed buns - in the brick kilns of Shanxi Province. There have also been reports of adults being forced to work under similar circumstances.
As the story spread across China, played prominently in newspaper headlines and on the Internet, a manhunt was announced midweek for Heng Tinghan, the foreman of one of the kilns where 31 of the workers were recently rescued, making him an instant addition to the nation's most-wanted list.
Su Jianjun, the father of the brother and sister who disappeared during their holiday bus trip, said that by midnight of the afternoon his children disappeared they had been brought to the factory where they were told they would have to make bricks.
"You will start working in the morning, so get some sleep, and don't lose your bowls or you will have to pay for them," he said the children were told. "They also charged him 50 renminbi for a blanket." Fifty renminbi is the equivalent of $6.50.
Su Jianjun's children were press-ganged for a little more than a week before his son managed to escape, following back roads and finally making his way home.
Many other parents have not been so fortunate, losing contact with children who have been gone for months or years. As stories of forced labor in the brick kilns have spread, hundreds of parents have joined to petition local authorities to help them find their children and crack down on the kilns.
In some cases, parents have also banded together to try to rescue their children, placing little stock in the local authorities, who have sometimes turned parents away from the factories in collusion with the kiln owners.
Other reports have said that the local authorities, including labor inspectors, have taken children from freshly closed kilns and resold them to other factories.
The director of the legal department of the Shanxi Province Workers Union said the kilns' location in isolated areas makes it difficult to crack down on the practice. "Those factories are located in very remote places and most them are illegal entities, without any legal registration, so it is very hard for people outside to know what is going on there," said Zhang Xiaosuo, the union official. "We are now doing a province-wide investigation into them, both the legal and illegal ones, to look into labor issues there."
Liu Cheng, a professor of labor law at Shanghai Normal University, had a rather different explanation.
"My first reaction is that this seems like a typical example of a government-business alliance," said Liu. "Forced labor and child labor in China are illegal, but some local governments don't care too much."
Zhang Xiaoying, 37, a mother who lost her 15-year-old son in January, said she had visited more than 100 brick factories during a handful of visits to Shanxi Province to search for him.
"You just could not believe what you saw," Zhang said. "Some of the kids working at these places were at most 14 or 15 years old."
The local police, she said, were unwilling to help. Outside one factory, they demanded bribes.
"We finally got into that place, and I saw people hauling carts of bricks with great difficulty," Zhang said. "Some of them were very small, and the ropes they pulled left tracks of blood on their shoulders and backs. Others were making bricks, standing by the machines.
"They had to move the bricks from the belt very quickly, because they were hot and heavy and they could easily get burned or hurt by the machines."
When Zhang spoke, on Thursday, she still had not found her son. Contacted again Friday, she exclaimed: "Great news. They've found him," explaining that Su Jianjun, the father of the brother and sister who had disappeared earlier in the year, had given her information that aided in her son's rescue.
Another father, Cai Tianliang, said that he had set out to Shanxi Province from his native province of Henan in search of his missing son after a local television broadcast showed a team of television reporters and Henan parents searching the Shanxi kilns for kidnapped children.
"I thought there was a great possibility that my son was also kidnapped, so I went there twice," Cai said. "The usual thing is for an owner to have more than one factory, and to shift people without identification from one place to another."
On his first trip, with a group of other parents, Cai said he found few clues. On a second visit to the area, he said, he was refused police permits to enter any of the brick factories, but persisted anyway.
"We located a place called the Zhengjie Brick Factory in a town called Chengbei, and at first they would not allow us in, but we kept negotiating. Finally, they let a few of us in and they found my son inside."
Like many other parents, Cai said he was stunned by his son's condition when they were reunited.
"My son was totally dumb, not even knowing how to cry, or to scream or to call out 'father,' " he said. "I burst into tears and held him in my arms, but he had no reaction. He was in rags and had wounds all over his body. Within three months he had lost over 10 kilos," or 22 pounds.
Cai said that he tried to rescue another 16-year-old boy he found there, but was refused by the factory boss. "He said I could only take my own, and must leave other people behind at the kiln.""
Nice to know that some of the products we purhase in this country are made by Chinese slave and child labor.
Wal-Mart should be proud of themselves for their insistence that most of their products be made in China.
Child slave labor revelations sweeping China
By Howard W. French
"SHANGHAI: Su Jinduo and Su Jinpeng, brother and sister, were traveling home by bus from a vacation visit to Qingdao during the Chinese New Year when they disappeared.
Cheated out of their money when they sought to buy a ticket for the final leg of their journey home, they were taken in by a woman who offered them warm shelter and a meal on a cold winter night, and then later a chance to earn enough money to pay their fare by helping her sell fruit.
The next thing they knew they were being loaded onto a minibus with several other children and taken to a factory in the next province, where they were pressed into service making bricks. Several days later, the boy, who is 16, escaped along with another boy and managed to reach home, enabling his father to rescue his 18-year-old sister a few days later.
This story is one of hundreds like it that have swept China in recent days in an unfolding labor abuse scandal that involves the kidnapping in central China of hundreds of children, and perhaps more, some reportedly as young as 8, who have been forced to work under brutal conditions - scantily clothed, unpaid and often fed little more than water and steamed buns - in the brick kilns of Shanxi Province. There have also been reports of adults being forced to work under similar circumstances.
As the story spread across China, played prominently in newspaper headlines and on the Internet, a manhunt was announced midweek for Heng Tinghan, the foreman of one of the kilns where 31 of the workers were recently rescued, making him an instant addition to the nation's most-wanted list.
Su Jianjun, the father of the brother and sister who disappeared during their holiday bus trip, said that by midnight of the afternoon his children disappeared they had been brought to the factory where they were told they would have to make bricks.
"You will start working in the morning, so get some sleep, and don't lose your bowls or you will have to pay for them," he said the children were told. "They also charged him 50 renminbi for a blanket." Fifty renminbi is the equivalent of $6.50.
Su Jianjun's children were press-ganged for a little more than a week before his son managed to escape, following back roads and finally making his way home.
Many other parents have not been so fortunate, losing contact with children who have been gone for months or years. As stories of forced labor in the brick kilns have spread, hundreds of parents have joined to petition local authorities to help them find their children and crack down on the kilns.
In some cases, parents have also banded together to try to rescue their children, placing little stock in the local authorities, who have sometimes turned parents away from the factories in collusion with the kiln owners.
Other reports have said that the local authorities, including labor inspectors, have taken children from freshly closed kilns and resold them to other factories.
The director of the legal department of the Shanxi Province Workers Union said the kilns' location in isolated areas makes it difficult to crack down on the practice. "Those factories are located in very remote places and most them are illegal entities, without any legal registration, so it is very hard for people outside to know what is going on there," said Zhang Xiaosuo, the union official. "We are now doing a province-wide investigation into them, both the legal and illegal ones, to look into labor issues there."
Liu Cheng, a professor of labor law at Shanghai Normal University, had a rather different explanation.
"My first reaction is that this seems like a typical example of a government-business alliance," said Liu. "Forced labor and child labor in China are illegal, but some local governments don't care too much."
Zhang Xiaoying, 37, a mother who lost her 15-year-old son in January, said she had visited more than 100 brick factories during a handful of visits to Shanxi Province to search for him.
"You just could not believe what you saw," Zhang said. "Some of the kids working at these places were at most 14 or 15 years old."
The local police, she said, were unwilling to help. Outside one factory, they demanded bribes.
"We finally got into that place, and I saw people hauling carts of bricks with great difficulty," Zhang said. "Some of them were very small, and the ropes they pulled left tracks of blood on their shoulders and backs. Others were making bricks, standing by the machines.
"They had to move the bricks from the belt very quickly, because they were hot and heavy and they could easily get burned or hurt by the machines."
When Zhang spoke, on Thursday, she still had not found her son. Contacted again Friday, she exclaimed: "Great news. They've found him," explaining that Su Jianjun, the father of the brother and sister who had disappeared earlier in the year, had given her information that aided in her son's rescue.
Another father, Cai Tianliang, said that he had set out to Shanxi Province from his native province of Henan in search of his missing son after a local television broadcast showed a team of television reporters and Henan parents searching the Shanxi kilns for kidnapped children.
"I thought there was a great possibility that my son was also kidnapped, so I went there twice," Cai said. "The usual thing is for an owner to have more than one factory, and to shift people without identification from one place to another."
On his first trip, with a group of other parents, Cai said he found few clues. On a second visit to the area, he said, he was refused police permits to enter any of the brick factories, but persisted anyway.
"We located a place called the Zhengjie Brick Factory in a town called Chengbei, and at first they would not allow us in, but we kept negotiating. Finally, they let a few of us in and they found my son inside."
Like many other parents, Cai said he was stunned by his son's condition when they were reunited.
"My son was totally dumb, not even knowing how to cry, or to scream or to call out 'father,' " he said. "I burst into tears and held him in my arms, but he had no reaction. He was in rags and had wounds all over his body. Within three months he had lost over 10 kilos," or 22 pounds.
Cai said that he tried to rescue another 16-year-old boy he found there, but was refused by the factory boss. "He said I could only take my own, and must leave other people behind at the kiln.""
Nice to know that some of the products we purhase in this country are made by Chinese slave and child labor.
Wal-Mart should be proud of themselves for their insistence that most of their products be made in China.