Beijing’s Lack of Penalties in Labor Cases Stirs Outrage

By Howard W. French | The New York Times
July 17, 2007

China’s efforts to bring a quick end to an embarrassing labor scandal over slavelike conditions for hundreds of workers at brick kilns in Shanxi Province has provoked anger among victims and widespread criticism.

The provincial government said Monday that dozens of officials were being punished in the scandal, but that only six low-level figures in the Communist Party or the local government would be prosecuted. The punishments ranged from demotions and firings to expulsion from the party or administrative warnings.

“Other than the direct responsibility of the owners, the ‘black brick kilns’ incident happened mainly because of lax supervision and dereliction of duty of grass-roots party and government officials,” Yang Senlin, a senior provincial Communist Party disciplinary official, told the Xinhua news agency.

Contradicting the accounts of many people who were freed from the kilns, including numerous children, Mr. Yang said there was no evidence of collusion or corruption among local officials.

Chinese journalists say government propaganda officials have urged the news media to limit coverage of the scandal. But the announcements on Monday brought a torrent of strongly critical commentary on the Internet, with thousands of bloggers and participants in news discussion groups denouncing what were widely perceived as light punishments and questioning the failure to pursue criminal charges or corruption accusations in more cases.

“A serious political incident was first turned into a serious criminal case, and then slowly transformed into a matter of ordinary malfeasance,” one online commenter wrote. “Once all of these rustlings are over, the same things are bound to happen again.”

Another wrote, “This is an obvious matter of dereliction of duty, and it has been treated as a question of party discipline instead of under the legal code.”

A Beijing lawyer who is not directly involved in the matter voiced disbelief about the small number of criminal prosecutions. “Look how many places and how many people were involved in this,” said the lawyer, Li Fangping, whose specialty is civil rights law. “Without the protection of more officials, this would be impossible.”

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