Six workers from the Tieshu Textile Factory in Suizhou City, Hubei, were placed under formal arrest last week and charged with the crime of “disturbing social order,” following a mass protest on 8 February in which around 1,200 fellow Tieshu workers blocked the main railway line through Suizhou and occupied the factory premises for several hours. Both protest actions were violently broken up later the same day by hundreds of armed police. China Labour Bulletin has confirmed that at least two of the workers’ families received official formal notifications of the arrests on February 26.

The arrests of the six Tieshu workers suggest that the Suizhou government has decided to end by force, rather than by constructive negotiation, the now fifteen month-long peaceful campaign by the Tieshu textile workers to recover more than 200 million Yuan in back wages, redundancy payments, worker shares and other entitlements still owed to them by the bankrupt factory’s management. The workers have long been demanding a government enquiry into corrupt practices at the factory, which they say led not only to the sharp downturn in factory profits in recent years that caused the bankruptcy, but also to the unexplained recent disappearance of almost 75 percent of the value of workers’ shares in the factory.

In an interview with CLB, the wife of Wang Hanwu, one of the six workers formally arrested last week, said that her husband had done nothing more than make several speeches at the side of the railway line on 8 February and he had not taken part in the actual blocking of the railway line. Although merely exercising his right to freedom of speech, Wang has reportedly been accused by the police of “inciting” the workers’ protest action. His wife has been told by a local law firm that it would cost her at least 20,000 Yuan to hire a defence lawyer to represent her husband in court – a sum far beyond the family’s slender financial resources. Moreover, the relatives of other arrested Tieshu workers have received unconfirmed reports that the Suizhou government has instructed local law firms that they will not be permitted to provide legal defence services for any of the detainees.

According to reliable CLB sources, a second arrested worker, Zhu Guo – a former army officer who joined the Tieshu factory after being demobilized from the PLA some years ago – was not even present at either the railway blocking incident or the brief occupation of the Tieshu factory by workers on 8 February. He is believed to have been targeted for arrest by the authorities mainly or solely because of the bold and forthright nature of comments he made on behalf of the workforce during earlier meetings with the factory’s managers.

The identity of the four other Tieshu workers arrested last week is not yet known. The general criminal charge on which all six are said to have been arrested – “disturbing social order” (raoluan shehui zhixu zui) – covers a wide range of specific offences that are punishable by anything from one to ten years’ imprisonment. At present, neither the specific charges against the six detainees nor the expected dates of trial are known.

Around 20 workers altogether were detained in the course of a city-wide manhunt by police in the days following the February 8 violent crackdown on the Tieshu textile workers’ protest campaign. Eight of the detained workers were held, without due process of law, in a Suizhou hotel for five days and made to undergo a “study class” (on the PRC Criminal Law and the Security Administration Punishment Act) before being released.

At least three others were subsequently sentenced without trial to “re-education through labour” for their alleged involvement in the 8 February protest. One of them, a 56-year-old woman named Chen Xiuhua who had received a one-year sentence, was found to be suffering from a heart condition; officials at the Labour Re-education Centre consequently refused to admit her and she was sent home “on medical bail.”

Another, Wei Yiming, a 38-year-old Tieshu textile worker, was detained during the 8 February railway blocking protest and subsequently sentenced without trial to one and a half years’ “re-education through labour.” The main charge against him – that he had “interrupted the Public Security Bureau Chief” – referred to a statement he made at the protest site while the PSB Chief was addressing the assembled workers through a loud-hailer. Wei said: “You [police officers] get two or three thousand Yuan a month, while we laid-off workers don’t even get enough to eat. If the factory would simply pay us the redundancy money they promised us, we’d call off this protest right away.” At a signal from the PSB Chief, four police officers rushed forward and detained Wei on the spot. Wei’s family is trying to lodge an administrative appeal against the sentence, but several local law firms have declined to take on the case because of its politically sensitive nature.

The third confirmed sentence of “labour re-education,” without trial or other due process of law, was passed on Sheng Bing, a 36-year-old Tieshu textile worker. Sheng was given a term of one year and nine months, on specific charges as yet unknown. The fate of several more of the 20 or so workers detained after February 8 in Suizhou remains known.

According to as yet unconfirmed reports, the Suizhou government initially tried to label the detained Tieshu workers as being “Falun Gong cases,” since this would have bolstered the “credibility” of the crackdown in the eyes of the Hubei provincial authorities. However, since the provincial authorities already had a comprehensive register of all local Falun Gong practitioners on file, and the Tieshu detainees were not listed among them, the Suizhou government is said to have abandoned this cynical attempt to tar the Tieshu workers with the “banned religious sect” label.

China Labour Bulletin calls upon the Suizhou City government to end its policy of forcible suppression of the Tieshu textile workers’ peaceful and legitimate struggle to secure economic justice from their former state-owned employer, and to initiate a full and impartial investigation into the workers’ allegations of corruption against the factory’s former senior managers. Unless clear and credible evidence can be swiftly produced to show that Wang Hanwu, Zhu Guo and the four other arrested Tieshu workers committed any internationally recognized criminal offence, all six workers should be immediately and unconditionally released, along with the two Tieshu worker currently undergoing “re-reducation through labour.” At a minimum, if the six arrested workers are to be prosecuted and brought to trial, they must be allowed full and immediate access to qualified legal counsel and their families should be granted legal financial aid to cover the high costs of a criminal defence.

China Labour Bulletin also calls upon the international trades union movement to appeal strongly to the Chinese authorities for the release of the six arrested Suizhou workers, and to show its firm solidarity with the fifteen month-old peaceful struggle of the several thousand Tieshu Textile Factory workers to defend their rights to a minimum basic livelihood and to recover the large sums of money still owed to them by the bankrupt state-owned factory’s former officials.

28 February 2004