New child slavery scandal exposed in China
Tuesday, 29 April 2008.
Sichuanese children sold like ”cabbages” to factories in Pearl River Delta • Youngest seven to nine years old!
Vincent Kolo, www.chinaworker.tk
Thousands of children from impoverished regions of central China have been sold into slavery like ”cabbages”, to work in factories in wealthier provinces such as Guangdong. Illegal child trafficking rings operating in Sichuan province and preying especially on children from the Yi minority group are said to be behind the trade. The news broke Tuesday (29 April) in the Shenzhen-based Southern Metropolis Newspaper.
The children were often lined up in front of a small supermarket for buyers to choose. According to the Southern Metropolis Newspaper: ”The bustling child labour market (in Sichuan province) was set up by the local chief foreman and his gang of 18 minor foremen, who each manage 50 to 100 child labourers... The children generally fall between the ages of 13 and 15, but many look under 10.”
The newspaper said 76 children from the same county, Liangshan, had been missing since the Chinese Lunar Year festival in February.
”Popular with bosses”
”The youngest kids found in the child labour market were only seven and nine years old,” the report continued. These child labourers are forced to work at least 300 hours a month. ”Their wages are very low, only from 2.5 yuan (€0.23) to 3.8 yuan per hour, and they don’t have any welfare protection, so they are very popular with bosses from nearby factories,” one trafficker said.
”These kids are robust and can do the toughest work,” a foreman was quoted as saying, as he pulled a scrawny girl to stand beside him, the paper said. Xinhua news agency said the county government had sent officials to rescue the children, but some were unwilling to leave, having been sold into slavery by their parents or volunteering to work themselves.
The Shenzhen Daily (29 April) quoted a ’foreman’ in the illegal trafficking organisation who said he had letters of guarantee from the children’s parents, which were also stamped by village committees – implying official connivance.
”When the contracts finish, we will take these kids back and look for other bosses to hire them. If they don’t follow the bosses’ instructions, I will come to the factory and beat them until they are obedient,” the same foreman said. The companies that bought the child slaves used fake hukou photocopies, in which the children’s ages were changed to above 18, so that labour inspectors would not become suspicious.
The news is highly embarrassing to the Chinese regime as it prepares to host the Olympics in 100 days’ time. It promised to stamp out slavery in China after last year’s gruesome revelations of slave-trading in Henan and Shanxi provinces, also involving large numbers of children. Following the Shanxi-Henan scandal the government rushed through its new labour contract law, which took effect in January 2008, ostensibly to give greater protection to tens of millions of low-paid factory workers who are forbidden to build genuine trade unions. Clearly, the law has not made a fundamental difference.
As chinaworker.tk warned at the time of last year’s Shanxi-Henan scandal, modern slavery cannot be abolished by the so called ’communist’ party regime. As we said then, this task ”requires a mass movement to drive out the slave traders and seize their ill-gotten assets!” In order for this to be possible, we called for ”independent and fully democratic trade unions to enforce decent wages, an eight-hour working day and safe, humane working conditions.” The latest horrific reports from Sichuan and Guangdong prove once again that mass working class struggle is the only way forward.
Read our article: China’s slave scandal – How could this happen?
Vincent Kolo, www.chinaworker.tk
Thousands of children from impoverished regions of central China have been sold into slavery like ”cabbages”, to work in factories in wealthier provinces such as Guangdong. Illegal child trafficking rings operating in Sichuan province and preying especially on children from the Yi minority group are said to be behind the trade. The news broke Tuesday (29 April) in the Shenzhen-based Southern Metropolis Newspaper.
The children were often lined up in front of a small supermarket for buyers to choose. According to the Southern Metropolis Newspaper: ”The bustling child labour market (in Sichuan province) was set up by the local chief foreman and his gang of 18 minor foremen, who each manage 50 to 100 child labourers... The children generally fall between the ages of 13 and 15, but many look under 10.”
The newspaper said 76 children from the same county, Liangshan, had been missing since the Chinese Lunar Year festival in February.
”Popular with bosses”
”The youngest kids found in the child labour market were only seven and nine years old,” the report continued. These child labourers are forced to work at least 300 hours a month. ”Their wages are very low, only from 2.5 yuan (€0.23) to 3.8 yuan per hour, and they don’t have any welfare protection, so they are very popular with bosses from nearby factories,” one trafficker said.
”These kids are robust and can do the toughest work,” a foreman was quoted as saying, as he pulled a scrawny girl to stand beside him, the paper said. Xinhua news agency said the county government had sent officials to rescue the children, but some were unwilling to leave, having been sold into slavery by their parents or volunteering to work themselves.
The Shenzhen Daily (29 April) quoted a ’foreman’ in the illegal trafficking organisation who said he had letters of guarantee from the children’s parents, which were also stamped by village committees – implying official connivance.
”When the contracts finish, we will take these kids back and look for other bosses to hire them. If they don’t follow the bosses’ instructions, I will come to the factory and beat them until they are obedient,” the same foreman said. The companies that bought the child slaves used fake hukou photocopies, in which the children’s ages were changed to above 18, so that labour inspectors would not become suspicious.
The news is highly embarrassing to the Chinese regime as it prepares to host the Olympics in 100 days’ time. It promised to stamp out slavery in China after last year’s gruesome revelations of slave-trading in Henan and Shanxi provinces, also involving large numbers of children. Following the Shanxi-Henan scandal the government rushed through its new labour contract law, which took effect in January 2008, ostensibly to give greater protection to tens of millions of low-paid factory workers who are forbidden to build genuine trade unions. Clearly, the law has not made a fundamental difference.
As chinaworker.tk warned at the time of last year’s Shanxi-Henan scandal, modern slavery cannot be abolished by the so called ’communist’ party regime. As we said then, this task ”requires a mass movement to drive out the slave traders and seize their ill-gotten assets!” In order for this to be possible, we called for ”independent and fully democratic trade unions to enforce decent wages, an eight-hour working day and safe, humane working conditions.” The latest horrific reports from Sichuan and Guangdong prove once again that mass working class struggle is the only way forward.
Read our article: China’s slave scandal – How could this happen?
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