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Chinese police detain Shanxi kiln foreman

"I felt it was a fairly small thing, just hitting and swearing at the workers and not giving them wages."

Heng Tinghan, foreman at brick kiln in China

Police have detained 168 people linked to a human trafficking network supplying slave labor to mines and brick works in northern and central China, state media reported yesterday.

At total of 568 people including children and mentally handicapped people were freed from slavery in brick kilns and illegal mines over the past few days in thousands of sites in northern Shanxi and central Henan provinces, Xinhua news agency reported.

Local officials and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members were implicated in a slave trade scandal that has stunned a country accustomed to reports of appalling worker exploitation linked to rapid economic growth.

A total of 351 people -- including 22 children -- were freed from 3,700 brick works and coal mines in Shanxi while 217 -- including 29 children and 10 mentally handicapped people -- were released in Henan, Xinhua said.

Police said they had broken up five human trafficking gangs in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, and arrested 13 members accused of supplying slave labor, Xinhua said.

A total of 48 people linked to the scandal were detained in Shanxi, while 120 were being held in Henan, the news agency added.

Those detained included Heng Tinghan, a 42-year-old foreman of a brick kiln in Shanxi Province, who is accused of employing 32 slave laborers at a brick kiln he ran for the son of the local party chief.

One worker at the kiln was allegedly beaten to death last year while others were regularly starved, beaten and forced to work long hours for no pay.

"They had all been hit by bricks and sticks. Seven of them were badly injured, with broken legs and such," police said.

Police caught Heng late on Saturday after a nationwide manhunt, Xinhua reported.

He has become a central villain in a national drama over possibly hundreds or more teenage and adult "slaves" forced or cheated into gruelling labor in kilns, mines and foundries across Shanxi and Henan.

When caught in the central province of Hubei, Heng apologized for mistreating workers but denied blame for the death of the mentally impaired man, a Hubei newspaper reported.

"I felt it was a fairly small thing, just hitting and swearing at the workers and not giving them wages," Heng said, the Shiyan Evening News reported.

"The dead man had nothing to do with me," he said.

The scandal has tarnished the CCP's promises to build a "harmonious" society with improved rights and income for the nation's hundreds of millions of poor farmers.

The China Youth Daily called the coercion a "shocking disgrace" exposing officials' failure to enforce labor laws.

"When a law is massively undercut in its implementation so that it becomes a worthless piece of paper, then it's necessary to rethink the law itself," the newspaper said.

State TV has reported that owners of the primitive brick-making operations ran them like prisons with fierce dogs and beatings to deter escapes.

Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) have issued "instructions" on the scandal, state media reported.
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