Police in southwestern China said yesterday they had freed 24 people forced to work at a brick kiln — the second such rescue in a week in a nation rocked by a huge slave labor scandal in 2007.
The workers in Yunnan Province had been lured into working for the kiln in Shilin County, where they were kept captive and beaten up if they refused to do manual labor, state media reported.
Police in Shilin raided the brick kiln on Friday after they were alerted to the disappearance of a villager who had been forced to go work for the factory and never returned home, a Yunnan Daily Web site said.
“Twenty-four people were rescued and at least three people at the brick kiln have been criminally detained,” said a police officer at the public security bureau in the provincial capital of Kunming, who refused to be named.
The news follows a similar rescue operation in the Hebei Province on May 21, when police freed 34 people forced to work 14 to 18 hour days at a brick kiln and given electric shocks if they protested.
The workers were rescued only after one man managed to escape the factory and reported the abuses to the police, the local Yanzhao Metropolis Daily reported on Sunday.
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