One unpaid migrant worker was beaten to death at a building site
in Guangdong Province and hundreds of his
workmates who were striking to get delayed salaries were injured by
thugs the building owner hired.
The attackers, armed with shovels, steel pipes, axes, and
knives, injured many of the strikers and killed Lei Mingzhong, a
laborer from Kaixian County in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.
The Chongqing Morning Post, reporting on the incident,
said all the workers were from Chongqing and were working on a
power plant construction project at Heyuan City in Guangdong
Province.
Wang Guangtao, China's Minister of
Construction, has ordered a thorough investigation of the
incident.
Ye Dinghua, team leader of the security guards of Fuyuan
Hydropower Development Co, and Zhou Wu, Fuyuan's representative at
the building site, have been detained by police.
Nearly 300 workers went on strike on Friday at the site after
working for four months without payment, because the owner, a
subsidiary of Shenzhen based Fuyuan Energy Group, had delayed
paying the contractor millions of yuan.
Having failed to coerce the workers to end the strike, Fuyuan
then hired hundreds of thugs to fight them and force them back to
work. Ye was reported to have led the thugs when they rushed the
workers and beat them.
The workers, most of who were reported to have been
empty-handed, suffered injuries in the fierce attack, even after
police arrived at the scene. Lei was killed while two of his
workmates were forced to jump from a high wall into the Dongjiang
River. The thugs even threw rocks into the river after them, the
newspaper said.
Fuyuan Hydropower Co, a subsidiary of Fuyuan Group, plans to
build a hydroelectric power station on Dongjiang River at Lankou
Town, Dongyuan County. With a total investment of 316 million yuan
(US$41 million) from Fuyuan Group, the power plant is expected to
produce 90 million kilowatt hours a year.
Miao Shouliang, the boss of Fuyuan Group, was listed as the 19th
richest real estate tycoon last year by Rupert Hoogewerf, a former
Forbes China employee who established his own luxury
business listing company — Hurun Report — in Shanghai.
Miao denied delaying the payment of money to the contractor but
hung up when reporters asked him to comment on the incident.
China passed a contract labor law to protect the basic rights of
workers on Friday.
(Shanghai Daily July 2, 2007)