Beijing - Police in central China's Henan province have
rescued another 217 labourers, including 29 children, who were held
in conditions of virtual slavery at brickworks, state media said
Thursday.
The police detained 120 people accused of trafficking the
labourers to the brickworks, where they were beaten, starved and
forced to work long hours without payment, the official Xinhua news
agency quoted provincial officials as saying.
The province sent out 35,000 police to check 7,500 brickworks in
Henan from June 9 to 12 and set up a special task force to crack down
on the illegal labour practices, the agency said.
'We must do everything we can to fight human trafficking and help
those held captive,' Qin Yuhai, the Henan police chief and provincial
vice governor, was quoted as saying.
The raids followed reports earlier in June that police in the
neighbouring province of Shanxi had rescued 31 Henan labourers,
including one who was 14 years old.
The workers said they were forced by owners of a brickworks to
work 20 hours a day and live on bread and water.
A group of 11 hired thugs ensured that the labourers kept working
and did not leave the compound housing the brickworks, which was
owned by the son of a village secretary of China's ruling Communist
Party, the Beijing News and other media reported.
Another worker was allegedly beaten to death with a hammer for
working too slowly, the reports said.
Also on Thursday, state media said at least 1,000 children were
working at brickworks in conditions of near slavery in Shanxi.
Many of the children were tricked or abducted from Henan and sold
as labourers in several areas of southern Shanxi, the Shanghai
Morning Post (Xinwen Chen Bao) and other media reported.
The plight of the child labourers was highlighted by a group of
400 parents from Henan who travelled to Shanxi to search for their
missing children, the reports said.
The local Shanxi Evening News had already highlighted the problem
of child labour in local brickworks in 2004, according to a report
seen on the newspaper's website Thursday.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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