Chinese authorities are investigating reports that dozens of men armed with steel pipes and bars attacked a group of migrant construction workers seeking unpaid back wages, officials and reports said yesterday.
Six migrants were injured, two of them seriously, in the attack on Tuesday in Xian, a city in northern China's Shaanxi province, the state-run newspaper Shanghai Daily reported Friday.
The government office overseeing the construction site said Friday it had ordered the real estate developer to pay the workers their overdue wages.
"We will supervise the developer and make sure that every worker can get his money back," said a press spokesman at the Xian High-tech Development Zone, who like many government officials gave only his surname, Wang.
According to Wang, the construction company ran out of money after the real estate developer failed to pay it.
"By now, we have a list of more than 100 people who are owed about 1 million yuan [US$12,000] in wages" in total, he said.
"We're waiting for the list to be completed. The developer has promised to pay all the money within one week of checking and confirming the list."
A group of workers, mostly farmers from neighboring Sichuan province, had summoned local reporters to complain about their unpaid wages, and were arguing with a manager of the construction company when about 30 people arrived and began beating them, the newspaper reported.
Phone calls to the Xian police were not answered Friday morning.
The front-page Shanghai Daily report highlighted the attack as a sign that labor laws meant to protect migrant workers are poorly enforced. Official reports put the number of such itinerant laborers at 140 million, most of them underemployed farmers who seek construction work and other manual labor disdained by city dwellers.
Top communist party leaders have been demanding better enforcement of laws meant to protect such workers, but implementation at the local level is weak.
"Migrants deserve respect," said a headline on the newspaper's editorial page. It said the case was "but one little sliver of a nationwide story."
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
FORUM: The Solomon Islands’ move to bar Taiwan, the US and others from the Pacific Islands Forum has sparked criticism that Beijing’s influence was behind the decision Tuvaluan Prime Minister Feletei Teo said his country might pull out of the region’s top political meeting next month, after host nation Solomon Islands moved to block all external partners — including China, the US and Taiwan — from attending. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders’ meeting is to be held in Honiara in September. On Thursday last week, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Jeremiah Manele told parliament that no dialogue partners would be invited to the annual gathering. Countries outside the Pacific, known as “dialogue partners,” have attended the forum since 1989, to work with Pacific leaders and contribute to discussions around
END OF AN ERA: The vote brings the curtain down on 20 years of socialist rule, which began in 2005 when Evo Morales, an indigenous coca farmer, was elected president A center-right senator and a right-wing former president are to advance to a run-off for Bolivia’s presidency after the first round of elections on Sunday, marking the end of two decades of leftist rule, preliminary official results showed. Bolivian Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise front-runner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast in an election dominated by a deep economic crisis, results published by the electoral commission showed. He was followed by former Bolivian president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in second with 26.87 percent, according to results based on 92 percent of votes cast. Millionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who had been tipped
RSS