Police have arrested four of the hundreds of men who allegedly attacked migrant workers to break a strike in southern China, reports said yesterday.
The local government in Guangdong Province's Dongyuan County meanwhile denied an organized assault had taken place, saying the striking workers sparked the fight with employees of the Fuyuan Energy Company, the People's Daily reported.
That account contrasts sharply with the migrant workers' claims that police stood by as a huge mob of thugs attacked them.
clash
The four men were arrested on Saturday for beating up migrant workers, the People's Daily said. The clash left one migrant worker brain dead and six others seriously wounded, it said.
The striking workers come from the western city of Chongqing, whose furious local government dispatched a team of officials to Dongyuan County to mediate, the Chongqing Morning Post reported.
National Construction Minister Wang Guangtao (汪光燾) has requested an investigation into the violence, the head of the Chongqing team told the newspaper.
State media widely reported on the attack and arrests, but a police official at Dongyuan County in Guangdong Province, where the incident took place, said he knew nothing about the incident.
The official added it was not his department's case, and that it was his first day on the job. He refused to give his name or pass the call to a superior.
editorial
In an editorial yesterday, the English-language China Daily called for local authorities to be investigated over the attack, and suggested Dongyuan officials colluded with the company to exploit the workers, mirroring a slave labor scandal at brick kilns uncovered in central China earlier this month.
Both incidents highlight the widespread abuses faced by the country's 200 million migrant workers at the hands of unscrupulous employers and corrupt local officials, despite repeated government pledges to offer more protection.
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