 April 2004
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Sara Burke, Managing Editor Sam Diener, Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Telephone number: Fax number:
pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
Chinese Workers Attempt Factory Occupation From www.labornotes.org. It was the final straw. After 15 months of protests, on February 7, 2004, workers at the Tieshu textile factory in Suizhou, Hubei Province in China received notice that only one-fourth of the money they had invested in the factoryv would be returned, and that unemployed workers would no longer receive benefits. The Tieshu workers have held periodic mass protests since December 2002, when management declared bankruptcy. Blaming corruption and greed, workers have tried for 15 months both nonviolent direct action, twice blocking the factory's gates, and using the court system, with little result. On February 8, 2,000 workers and retirees blocked the local railroad and occupied the factory for several hours in protest. Eight- hundred riot police broke up the blockade by attacking the picketers with clubs, leaving both workers and police injured. In the next few days, police began rounding up workers who had participated in the protest, detaining 20 and arresting six. Eight were held in a local hotel for five days and forced to take a "study class," while three others were sentenced without trial to "re-education through labor" for over a year. Out of the six arrested for "disturbing the social order," Wang Hanwu only made speeches near the railroad blockade, and Zhu Guo was not present at either the blockade or the occupation. The other four have yet to be named. Other arrestees' families have heard that the Suizhou government has told local law firms not to take their cases. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which represents over 150 million workers in 152 countries, has protested the arrests with a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao. Call Chinese Minister of Justice Zhung Fusen at +86 10 65 292 345 or email him at minister@legalinfo.gov.cnto demand that Suizhou authorities immediately release those arrested.
For more information on campaigns for independent trade unions
in China and around the world, please see www.laborrightsnow.org/and the Wei Jingsheng Foundation at weijingsheng.org/labor.html.
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