Two brothers who admitted imprisoning and beating workers at their illegal brickyard in Sha’anxi have each been sentenced to just 18 months and 12 months (suspended for two years) in jail - even after an elderly brickyard worker died of exhaustion and heat stroke, the Legal Daily (法制日报) reported on 20 February [2].

The 18 surviving victims, mostly vagrants and beggars recruited from the local train station in Ankang [3], south of the provincial capital Xi’an, were given their “wages in arrears” and sent home.

This latest case of forced labour is remarkably similar to the illegal brickyard cases that caused such scandal two years ago, and indicates that the authorities are still not taking the problem seriously. The government has done little to either combat the root causes of the problem or implement measures to help the victims of abduction and forced labour. As was the case with the victims of the Shanxi brickyards in 2007 [4], no compensation or counselling was offered to the victims in Ankang, and it is not known what happened to them after they returned home.

The two brothers, Chen Hongguo and Chen Hongjun, had operated the brickyard in Jianmin township near Ankang since February 2008. They primarily targeted deaf-mutes and beggars at the Ankang railway station and tricked and coerced them into working at the brickyard. Once inside the brickyard, the victims were locked in and had their cell phones, identity cards and valuables confiscated. They were threatened with violent beatings if they did not work hard or attempted to escape. Several workers were told to “manage” the others with beatings. “If they are disobedient, beat them until they are bloody,” they were told.

The workers slept in a locked dilapidated building with just one toilet. They were woken at five or six in the morning and worked every day until eight or nine at night, with just three plain and hurried meals a day. On 31 July 2008, a man of sixty-plus years was loading unfired bricks when he suddenly fainted and died of exhaustion and heat stroke. The police were called in to investigate, and although they did not hold the Chen brothers accountable for the elderly worker’s death, they later investigated the brothers’ forced labour activities and arrested them on 5 September.

Both brothers admitted to forced labour and their sentences handed down by the Hanbin District Court in Ankang took effect on 3 February 2009.