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Scared bystanders take videos of unpaid workers being beaten

Posted by on 2015/02/24. Filed under China,Headline News,Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.


In China, some construction companies make big money and labor contractors often withhold wages for migrant workers. (Note: “Migrants” in China are people from rural areas who go to cities looking for work.) For this reason. protests and demonstrations over nonpayment are common. Workers sometimes even threaten to commit suicide if they aren’t paid.

On Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2015, migrant workers went to the corporate headquarters of the Yurun Group in Ninjing to demand their wages. The office manager called in the Shazhou Police substation chief. They spoke with workers’ representatives, registered ID cards and verified back salary figures, then promised the problem would be resolved that night. The workers then dispersed and waited until the next afternoon. The manager and the migrant workers’ representative met again, but didn’t come to an agreement.

At 10 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 13, 2015, workers once again gathered at the headquarters entrance to coordinate how to get their back pay. There already were thugs lying in wait for them. First they turned a high-pressure hose on the protesters, then used pepper spray. From behind the entrance came dozens of hired goons with steel pipes. They began striking at the protesters and chased those fleeing. One migrant worker was unconscious in the hospital, and two others were seriously injured and unconscious, one with fractures.

Non-payment of back wages is common in China. At Chinese New Year, migrant workers demanding their wages is a common phenomenon. On Saturday, Feb. 14, 2015, several migrant workers carried a red-letter protest banner to the Yangzhou Municipal Engineering Project Company entrance to demand their back wages. A guy in sunglasses with a shaved head by the company entrance beat a female protester and kicked her to the ground. Another young guy with a shaved head used a plastic pipe and whipped a male migrant worker with it. The migrant worker didn’t resist one bit, but the other guy in sunglasses attacked him with a hardhat, hitting him three times and then beating him to the ground.

The beating was witnessed by many Yangzhou residents. But none of the witnesses dared try to stop the violence. After the beatings, the two shaven-headed thugs threw away the plastic pipe and hard hat and swaggered off.

On the afternoon of Sunday, Feb. 15, 2015, this reporter contacted the Yangzhou Municipal Bureau of Housing and Urban Construction and Management director Sheng Xingquan. Sheng immediately reported the beatings to the Yangzhou Municipal Engineering Company board chair Ni Xing. Ni said he didn’t know who did the beating.

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