苹果唱吧历史版本分享:Chinese child slavery racket exposed [山西黑砖窑事件]

AM - Saturday, 16 June , 2007  08:09:00
Reporter: Stephen McDonell
ELIZABETH JACKSON: China has been shocked by the story of children kidnapped at
train and bus stations and sold as slaves to work in a brickworks.Four hundred fathers started an online campaign to find their missing children,
but the Government has only become involved after Chinese journalists began
investigating.Our China Correspondent, Stephen McDonell, reports.STEPHEN MCDONELL: This is a story you would expect to read in a Charles Dickens
novel, but it‘s taken place in China in the 21st century.As many as 1,000 children have been kidnapped from train and bus stations in
Henan, to be sold as slaves to work in the brickworks of neighbouring Shanxi
province.A group of 400 fathers say local police and officials actually hampered them
finding their sons, so they started an online campaign, appealing for public
help.Then, this week, Chinese journalists started writing about the trade in child
slaves and a local television journalist, Fu Zhen Zhong, went into a brickworks
with a secret camera.The journalist spoke to children who were working there, who began crying,
saying they wanted to go home.Operating undercover, Fu Zhen Zhong interviewed one of the managers. The
brickworks manager told him they buy children for 50 to 60 dollars.After Henan television broadcast their story this week, hundreds of parents went
 to the station to see if their children had been filmed.(Sound of woman speaking and crying)One woman broke into tears ?she‘d spotted her son on tape.(Sound of woman speaking)"Yes, this one, this one," she said.Then she went back with the journalist to the brickworks and rescued her son.She said she thought she‘d never see her son again.As part of their reporting, local journalists have accused the Shanxi Labour
Supervision Department of backing the child slave racket.Now the national Government has stepped in.Following massive publicity, a full investigation has been ordered by the
Politbureau. A team has now been sent to the area, headed by Zhang Mingqi, the
Secretary General of China‘s Trade Union Federation.When police visited one of the brickworks, children were filmed running to jump
on the back of their trailer to finally get away.Shanxi local Police Chief Liu Ling Zhong has been investigating the case."They got up around five every morning," he said. "They had a 20-minute lunch
break. At night they returned to their living quarters and were locked in. If
they had to go to the toilet, they did it inside."The children have been massively traumatised by the experience. When police
visited one site, a boy started to run away and they called out: "don‘t worry,
it‘s the police".Television journalist Fu Zhen Zhong has found himself fully immersed in the
story he is reporting."With the help of the parents from Henan Province, we rescued 14 or 15 kids," he
 said. "Based on our conservative estimates, there are more than 1,000 kids who
were abducted from Henan to work as slave labour in the brick factories of
Shanxi."The Chinese media, which is for the most part a tame and controlled organ of the
 state, this week produced some investigative journalism that not only exposed
an enormous injustice, but might just have smashed it to pieces.This is Stephen McDonell in Beijing for Saturday AM.