CHINA:Chinese TV viewers have been horrified by the sight of hundreds of children emerging hollow-eyed and emaciated from brick kilns in central China, where they were forced to work as slaves.
The reports showed teenagers who had been beaten, whipped and kept in concentration camp-like conditions guarded by vicious dogs, sores festering on their bodies as they toiled without end in brick factories in China's dusty heartland.
Many of the boys were kidnapped from their homes, sleeping on beds of brick in hellish dormitories, the doors tied shut with wire and the windows barred. As evidence of widespread official neglect accumulated, the fate of the children prompted President Hu Jintao to demand an investigation into the brick kilns of Shanxi province.
"We wanted to run but we couldn't. I tried once and was beaten," said one inmate of the brick factory.
Recent days have seen a number of slave factories uncovered by police cracking down on slave labour, the dark underbelly of China's burgeoning economic growth. According to the official Xinhua news agency, police in central China rescued 468 people after checking 7,500 kilns. They made up to 120 arrests.
Yang Aizhi (46) has been looking for her 16-year-old son, who went missing on March 8th. She went to more than 100 brick kilns in Shanxi and Henan and said that "most kilns were forcing children to do hard labour".
Some of the child slaves were still wearing their school uniforms, she said. Ms Yang has yet to find her son.
"Our conservative estimate is that at least 1,000 minors from Henan have been trapped and cheated into back-breaking work in these Shanxi brick kilns," said one local journalist who has been covering the scandal.