China: Ex-slave laborer tells of abuse, hunger By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN -- Associated Press Writer

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/world/story/3643370p-12983432c.html

Ex-slave laborer tells of abuse, hunger
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN -- Associated Press Writer
Published: Tuesday, June 19, 2007

RUZHOU, China (AP) Up from the countryside and desperate for work, 16-year-old Chen Chenggong jumped at the well-paying factory job offered by a man who approached him at the train station.

Within hours, he was bundled into a minivan with 12 others and taken to a brick yard where they were fed little, beaten often and forced to haul loads for 20 hours daily without pay. As for the recruiter, he never saw the man again.

"I hope they are shot," Chen said Wednesday of his former tormentors, his face, arms, legs and torso mottled with sores where the guards' blows became infected. Finally freed in a raid by provincial police, he returned home Saturday, but his fear remained palpable.


Chen Chenggong, 16, talks about his captivity at an illegal brick kiln to journalists at this home in Ruzhou, central China's Henan province, Wednesday, June 20, 2007. Chen returned home on Saturday, June 16, after four months in captivity at a brick kiln in northern China where he was beaten, starved, and forced to work 20 hours per day for no pay, one of hundreds of slave laborers freed in police raids over recent weeks. Injury on Chen's face were from festering wounds after beatings from his captors.
Ng Han Guan -- AP Photo

While Chen's story was impossible to immediately confirm, it echoes many others from former slaves that have become known in recent weeks. Apparently prompted by online protests and media reports, tens of thousands of police have raided more than 8,000 kilns and small coal mines in Shanxi and Henan provinces, freeing nearly 600 workers, including 51 children, and detaining about 160 suspects.

China's central authorities have ordered investigations, although some have questioned whether Beijing has the ability or the political will to take on local authorities whose support they need in carrying out policies across the vast country.

Local governments, which benefit from bribes, tax payments and ownership shares, are widely believed to have protected the operations, although authorities thus far have leveled accusations at only one village-level Communist Party secretary.

Chen's tale points to government neglect from start to finish. Having failed to qualify for upper high school, he was easy pickings for recruiters at the sprawling, chaotic, train station in Zhengzhou, provincial capital of his native Henan. Streets surrounding the station are plastered with job offerings and unlicensed job agencies, some of them believed linked to human traffickers who sell workers to brickyards.

In response to allegations of such ties, at least one other major city in the area, Xi'an, announced Wednesday it was banning all job agencies from around its railway station.

Following his March abduction, Chen said he often saw local uniformed police officers visit the brickyard in Shanxi's Hongtong region.

FULL story at link.

[lvx35]

1. Its time to get a global abolitionist movement going.

This stuff is happening, and happening to millions of people. The work of Lincoln isn't done.

[kurth]

2. "He often saw local uniformed police officers visit"

'Nuf said.