30 migrant workers enslaved in Shanxi brickworks freed

04 April 2006
Reports that 31 migrant workers, enslaved in a Shanxi brickworks, had been freed were carried by new media across the country, a sign that abuse of rural migrant workers has become an headline issue in China.

The Shanxi Evening News reported on its website that officers in Yuncheng's Yanhu district learned of the case on Monday, 27 March, when a young man ran into the police station, saying he had escaped from a brickyard where he and 30 other workers were being held against their will. The young man said he had been held there for one month.

The police gathered a team of armed officers and surrounded the brickworks and freed the other workers, many of whom huddled together and cried silently when they realized they were being rescued.

The brickworks was run by a migrant worker from southern Hunan province and two associates, also from Hunan, who were detained by the police. On 30 March, the three men were charged and sentenced to 15 days imprisonment and fined.

The workers came from several provinces Sichuan, Hubei, Shaanxi and various parts of Shanxi province. Almost all the workers told the Shanxi Evening News reporter that they had been tricked into going with the brickworks' operator by an underground employment recruiter, hired by the operator.

The lure was wages of 800 yuan to 1,500 yuan a month.

The youngest of the 30 was said to be aged 15 from Shanxi province and the oldest 61 from Sichuan. There was one woman from Hubei among the group. Some workers had been held for two months, while the shortest had worked just one day. None had received any wages during their time at the brickworks.

The group worked between 14 and 18 hours a day. Lunch was cabbage soup. All the workers were thin and with yellow complexions and dirty and tattered clothes. They said the boss employed a work gang leader and six guards. The workers said they were watched 24 hours a day and the door to the room were they slept was locked from the outside. They were beaten for the least infraction when working and no one working there escaped the beatings. One month earlier, a rural migrant worker with a northern accent had his arm broken in a beating. After the beating, the boss said to take him away. The other workers did not know where he had been taken.

In a follow-up story, the Shanxi Evening News reported that the Yanhu police had freed seven rural migrant workers from an unspecified brickworks on 22 March.  Incidences such as that which was uncovered in Yanhu – wherein labourers working at brickworks have been beaten, held against their will and not paid are more and more frequent, the website said.

Source: Shanxi Evening News (28-30 March 2006)

4 April 2006
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