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Brick kilns: Where were authorities? [ 2007-06-21 16:08 ] None of the synonyms for "anger" is strong enough to express the public's fury at the crimes committed by some brick kiln owners in Shanxi Province. As reported by the media last week, they had abducted children, forced them into slave labor, beat them and imprisoned them in the brickyards. According to the reports, "nearly 1,000" children were abducted to be sold to brickyards in several counties in Shanxi. The teenagers were forced to labor "on all fours" 14 hours a day without sufficient food. Nobody would believe that such atrocities depicted in movies of long-gone eras are happening in today's China - 58 years after the Communist Party-led revolution put an end to the old society. I want to ask: What were local government officials doing when the children and other workers were tormented? The public won't accept responses from the local administration and law enforcement authorities such as "We were not aware of the case" or "Nobody tipped us off." These excuses stem from two possibilities. Either they knew about the cases but denied the knowledge because they had interest in the brickyards or because they were afraid of being blamed for dereliction, or they really did not know. I don't want to discuss the suspected collaboration between the brickyard owners and local officials which is yet to be proved. But I want to emphasize that none of these arguments exempt them from charges of dereliction of duty given the fact that such blatant crimes happened under the very nose of these officials for so long a time. | 
