Modern-Day Slavery: China June 14, 2007

“So the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with back breaking labor. And they embittered their lives with hard labor, with clay and with bricks.” - Exodus 1:13-14

“So, on that day, Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, ‘You shall not continue to give straw to the people to make the bricks like yesterday and the day before yesterday. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks they have been making yesterday and the day before yesterday you shall impose upon them; you shall not reduce it…Let the labor fall heavy upon the men and let them work at it, and let them not talk about false matters.’” - Exodus 5:6-9
From MSNBC:
Police in central China have rescued 217 people, including 29 children, who had been forced by human traffickers into effective slavery at brick kilns, state media reported on Thursday…

On Wednesday, the People’s Daily newspaper reported on its Web site that at least 1,000 children in Henan had been kidnapped near train and bus stations and sold to work as slaves at brickworks in neighboring Shanxi province. Children as young as 8 were forced to work up to 14-hour days, and were often subject to beatings and given little food, the report said…

Yang Aizhi, a 46-year-old mother, whose son went missing on March 8, was one of the people who had alerted the public, Xinhua said, after she heard that her son had escaped from a kiln in Shanxi during her search of more than 100 kilns in the province.

“When the children were too tired to push carts, they were whipped by taskmasters,” Xinhua quoted Yang as saying, adding that she had still not found her son.
” And the L-rd said to Moses, ‘Now you will see what I will do… I heard the moans of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians are holding in bondage, and I remembered My covenant.
Therefore, say to the children of Israel, “I am the L-rd, and I will take you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will save you from their labor…”‘ - Exodus 6:1,5-6

About 120 people were detained in a crackdown after more than 35,000 police from Henan province who were sent to make checks at 7,500 kilns, the official Xinhua news agency said.

“We must do everything we can to fight human trafficking and rescue those held captive,” it quoted Qin Yuhai, a Henan vice governor and the province’s police chief, as saying.

Last week, state media reported the rescue of 31 people, forced to work for a year as slaves at a brickworks run by the son of a local Communist Party official in Shanxi.

Among them, eight were so traumatized that they were only able to remember their names, and one laborer was beaten to death with a hammer for not working hard enough.

Government attention follows an online petition drive started by parents of kidnapped children.

State-run media on Wednesday reported that the online campaign included parents forming teams that rescued 40 children recently.

According to the petition, 400 fathers of missing boys from the central province of Henan had banded together to find their sons at kilns hidden deep in the mountains of neighboring Shanxi province. It added that boys were sold for $65 each to kilns.

“Our children’s safety is everything, but who will help us? With governments on both sides passing the responsibility, where can we go for help?” the petition said.

Reports on the petition were carried on numerous Web sites, including one run by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper. Some carried photographs and television images appearing to show boys working in the kilns and parents rescuing children.
Perhaps not an open miracle, but salvation for these children nonetheless.

If China starts finding hemoglobin in municipal water supplies, I, for one, will be completely nonplussed.