More than 20 worker activists at a Chinese factory run by a Hong Kong-based company have been detained by police after a seven-week strike involving nearly 7,000 people, a rights group said yesterday.
The activists were rounded up over the past two weeks at the former Tianwang Textile Factory in Xianyang city, Shaanxi Province.
Around 10 of them were detained prior to Oct. 20, and the rest were seized by police over the past few days, China Labor Bulletin (CLB) said.
The Hong Kong-based rights group said the Xianyang Public Security Bureau has also issued a "wanted notice" for three other workers from the same factory, ordering them to report to police immediately. The factory and police refused to comment yesterday.
According to CLB, the duration of the strike is unprecedented in China since the country began its two decade old economic reform program. The workers, most of them women, began their action on Sept. 14.
They were protesting attempts by new majority shareholder China Resources (Holdings) Co Ltd, listed in Hong Kong, New York and London, to force them to sign what they considered new unfair labor contracts, CLB said.
The company has reportedly made some concessions, although the dispute is yet to be resolved.
According to the CLB, China Resources is refusing to give the workers compensation they are entitled to under government regulations for a change of status from state-owned enterprise workers to employees of a private company.
It said the police crackdown was likely prompted partly by the local authorities determination to prevent the workers from going ahead with a plan to elect a factory-level trade union.
"Government newspapers have been calling for several months now for foreign enterprises in China ... to respect the workers' legal right to establish trade union branches, and now the Xianyang authorities have detained more than 20 workers for trying to do precisely this," said CLB director Han Dongfang.
Hundreds of thousands of workers have been laid off with meager compensation in recent years as thousands of China's state-owned factories are transferred to private ownership.
Their anger has occasionally erupted into violent confrontations with former employers and authorities.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS