No, not me thank God but I’m reeling from the latest scandal to hit the Chinese press. Hundreds of young men and even primary school boys have been kidnapped and held to work as slaves in brickworks in two Central China provinces. They were made to work twenty hours a day and whipped to keep them working and beaten severely if they tried to leave. Can you imagine this happening to you? The news broke and local and national governments were forced to take heed when a courageous mother heard her teenaged son might have been forced to work at a brickworks. She couldn’t find her son but hassled a local tv station until they broadcast news of the problem. A task force of over a thousand police raided scores of brickworks and found over 400 slaves. They estimate at least a thousand more.
No doubt Catfish and many of our other black friends here descend from ancestors who suffered in the same way. In Britain we had the press gangs who would roam towns and villages grabbing people and forcing them to serve in the navy. In Australia we had the blackbirders who stole people from South Sea islands and brought them to Queensland where they had to toil in the Sugar cane fields.
I read later that it would be difficult to get justice for many victims and prosecute any of the **#@!!s except those who enslaved children because there are laws now against taking women and children as slaves but not men. That’s a pretty pathetic statement by whoever said it because there are plenty of laws in China as in any other country that can be used. They put a big effort into the coalmine tragedies in the last couple of years and a lot of managers, owners and officials sat in court so they can find ways to do this too.
If it happened to you, wouldn’t you want that? I bloody well would!