Revelation
The existence of illegal brickyards was first reported to authorities in 1998. On 1 May, Chen Jianjiao, a representative of the Shanxi People's Congress, received a telephone call from a laborer who had escaped from an illegal brickyard. The escaped man also wrote to the chairman of the Shanxi People's Congress. As a result, slave rescue operations were carried out by provincial government authorities without notifying local officials. Over 150 slaves, three of them child laborers, were freed from these illegal brickyards.
There have been continuing reports of cruelty committed at these illegal brickyards since 2004. On 7 May 2007, Henan TV Metro Channel reported the case of five minors around sixteen years old who had disappeared from the environs of Zhengzhou Railway Station. Having heard of earlier instances of child laborers being kidnapped for brickyards in Shanxi, their parents suspected their children might be found there. Two months later these five were among fifty minors from Henan who were found at an illegal brickyard. Human traffickers had sold them to brickyards for 500 Yuan each.
On 10 May, reporters from Henan Television, accompanied by two parents, visited the sites of some illegal brickyards in Shanxi undercover. Reporters later visited many illegal brickyards in Yuncheng and Jincheng. The conditions they found were clearly those of slavery.
Read more about this topic: 2007 Chinese Slave Scandal
Famous quotes containing the word revelation:
“Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Music, feelings of happiness, mythology, faces worn by time, certain twilights and certain places, want to tell us something, or they told us something that we should not have missed, or they are about to tell us something; this imminence of a revelation that is not produced is, perhaps, the esthetic event.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Both magic and religion are based strictly on mythological tradition, and they also both exist in the atmosphere of the miraculous, in a constant revelation of their wonder-working power. They both are surrounded by taboos and observances which mark off their acts from those of the profane world.”
—Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942)