Student activists detained in China for supporting workers' rights

Protesters describe themselves as fervent Marxists and Maoists, presenting a unique problem for Communist party

By Benjamin Haas

 Groups of unknown men detained activists in at least five Chinese cities over the weekend 

At least 10 young Chinese labour protesters have been detained as part of a crackdown targeting a rise in student activism at elite universities across the country.
Groups of unknown men detained activists in at least five Chinese cities over the weekend, according one labour rights group, and some were beaten before being bundled into waiting cars.
One activist, Zhang Shengye, was “kidnapped” on the campus of Peking University, one of China’s top universities. 

It was not immediately clear what had happened to the activists who went missing in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Wuhan.
“They hit him hard and quickly got Zhang under control,” one witness told AFP, requesting anonymity.
The activists have presented a unique problem for China’s ruling Communist party. 

They describe themselves as fervent Marxists and Maoists, supporting workers’ rights as an extension of their communist ideals. 

Marxist classes are required for all Chinese university students and Xi Jinping said Karl Marx was “totally correct” in a speech marking the 200th anniversary of the philosopher’s birth.
But amid a rise in student protestors hailing from the country’s top universities, authorities have worked to stifle their message of establishing unions and protecting employee rights.

Independent unions in China are banned and all unions must register with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a government-affiliated group that usually sides with factory management.

“It’s ironic to see how the students who have been studying and believing in Marxism are rounded up by the Chinese authorities for supporting workers, the fundamental value of Marxism,” said Patrick Poon, a researcher at Amnesty International in Hong Kong. 

“The students are simply exercising their their freedom of expression and showing their solidarity to the workers. They should be immediately released.”
In August, 50 student activists went missing after police raided an apartment where they were staying. 

Students from Renmin University in Beijing and Nanjing University have also disappeared or been held under house arrest. 

Three workers investigating conditions in a factory making shoes for Ivanka Trump’s brand were separately detained in May.
Zhang, the recent graduate who was beaten in Beijing, was leading the search for activists who had been previously detained. 

A witness said the men that detained Zhang also beat several bystanders and prevented them from taking photos, according to AFP.
“Peking University acquiesced to the kidnapping. This is another crime universities have committed against progressive students and the leftwing community,” said the Jasic Workers Solidarity group, which has been working with employees of the machine welding company Jasic Technology.
The group said at least two members of a NGO supporting workers in Shenzhen, along with three members of the solidarity group and an unspecified number of other activists were also detained in the crackdown.
The treatment of students activists has promoted at least one school, Cornell University, to end an exchange program with Renmin University.

China's State Terrorism

50 student activists missing in China after police raid

Video shows police storming flat used by students backing workers seeking union rights
By Lily Kuo in Beijing

Activists supporting the factory workers are pictured inside an apartment in Huizhou. 

Fifty student activists have gone missing in southern China after police raided an apartment where they had been mobilising support for factory workers demanding union rights.
Labour activists who were in touch with the group said the raid took place at 5am on Friday in Huizhou, near Shenzhen, in Guangdong province. 

Activists said they were not able to contact or locate those who had been detained. 

Video footage of the raid showed police in riot gear storming an apartment and scuffling with occupants.
The group, made up 50 students and five workers, is part of a small but growing labour rights coalition in China’s manufacturing region where independent labour unions are barred and activism is seen as a threat.
Last month, workers and their supporters staged protests at an industrial welding equipment factory in Shenzhen, Jasic Technology, in response to the firing of employees who had attempted to form an independent trade union. 

All unions in China must register with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, a government-affiliated group that usually sides with factory management.
The protests gained the support of Chinese university students who posted letters of support online, while others travelled to Shenzhen. 

The group of supporters has expanded to include retired party officials and Maoist groups. 

As of the end of July, 30 people had been arrested, according to Amnesty International.
Earlier this month about 50 students protested outside a police station in Shenzhen where workers and their supporters had been detained, according to China Labour Bulletin, a labour rights group in Hong Kong.
The group said two workers representatives and a student who had been advocating for the Jasic case had also disappeared.
On Thursday the group in Huizhou posted a video explaining their support for the workers. 

Standing in a group, wearing matching T-shirts, one said: “The reason the Jasic case has gotten so big is because [the authorities] refuse to deal with the problems themselves and insist instead on dealing with those who raise the problems.”

China's student activists cast rare light on brewing labor unrest

By Sue-Lin Wong and Christian Shepherd

SHENZHEN, China -- When Shen Mengyu graduated with a master’s degree from a top Chinese university in 2015, she could have landed a comfortable job in government or at one of China’s internet giants.

People hold banners at a demonstration in support of factory workers of Jasic Technology, outside Yanziling police station in Pingshan district, Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China August 6, 2018. 

Instead, she went to work at a car parts factory in the southern city of Guangzhou, pursuing her interest in labor activism.
In May, she was fired for organizing workers at the plant. 

Undeterred, she began advocating for workers trying to form an autonomous trade union at Jasic International, a welding machinery exporter in nearby Shenzhen.
Shen is part of a cohort of activists across China who have been supporting and publicizing worker protests and detentions at a time of slowing economic growth.
The activists include students and recent graduates, as well as retired factory workers and Communist Party members.
While they appear to be small in number, the activists are drawing rare attention to calls for greater union representation from Chinese workers, particularly in the south, where demands for more pay are growing.
This unrest poses a challenge for the ruling Communist Party, which opposes independent labor action and punishes protesters. 

It also views the activists as a threat to its authority.
Shen told Reuters last week the authorities had been intimidating her parents to get her to stop her activism.
On Saturday night, after dining with her parents near the Jasic factory, Shen was bundled into a car by three unidentified men, two student activists from Peking University who were at the scene told Reuters.
“Mengyu was shouting ‘What are you doing? Let me go, let me go’,” one of the activists said. “Everything happened so quickly, we ran to get help and by the time we came back she and the car had disappeared.”
The students said they reported the abduction to the police, who doubted their account and refused to take down crucial parts of their statement. 

They were also told that video cameras at the location of the incident were broken.
Calls to Shen and the police went unanswered on Monday.
Local police said on their official social media account Monday that they had been in contact with Shen’s parents.
“This is a matter regarding a family dispute, it is not a kidnapping,” it said, without further explanation. 

Reuters was unable to reach Shen’s parents.

People hold banners at a demonstration in support of factory workers of Jasic Technology, outside Yanziling police station in Pingshan district, Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China August 6, 2018. 

WORKER PROTESTS
Protests at the Jasic factory broke out in early July after seven workers attempting to form a union and elect their own leaders were laid off. 

On July 27, after two weeks of protests, the police detained 29 people, including laid-off workers, their families and supporters.
Hundreds of Chinese university students penned open letters on social media in support of the workers, and around 20 traveled to Shenzhen, in Guangdong province.
Unions in China have to register with the official All-China Federation of Trade Unions. 

The federation is more responsive to the demands of management than workers.
On August 6, around fifty student activists and supporters of the Jasic workers protested outside the police station where the workers were detained in Shenzhen.
“Lots of fellow students say: this incident is about workers, what does this have to do with students? I’ll tell them one thing: today’s students are tomorrow’s workers,” said Yue Xin, 22, a recent graduate of Peking University, in a video from the protest she shared online.
Yue, currently a factory worker in southern China, gained prominence in April for pressing her university to make public an investigation into a decades-old rape and suicide case.
The people who traveled to Shenzhen have been facing pressure from their universities, parents and officials, according to nine activists interviewed by Reuters.
“My university advisor has called me repeatedly, accusing me of being involved in illegal activities, “ said one activist from a Guangdong university. 

The activist said he had been told “to think very carefully about what I was doing and how it might impact my studies and my future.”
Some supporters were intercepted on their way to Shenzhen and sent home, the students said.
In interviews, some activists said they were motivated by growing inequality in China, and heard about worker protests in online forums before posts were removed by authorities.
They said they were also exposed to labor issues at student-run university clubs and reading groups.
“Both my parents are factory workers so I have always had an interest in labor rights,” said one of the activists who saw Shen taken away.
The students often speak the same language of Marxist theory and egalitarianism used by the Communist Party, yet have found themselves at odds with the authorities.
Last November, a Peking University graduate, Zhang Yunfan, was detained in Guangzhou after founding a reading group focused on improving the plight of factory workers.
In an online statement on July 29, Jasic denied mistreating workers or blocking their union. 

It said it fired some workers in accordance with the law and that a union was being established. 

Jasic did not respond to a faxed request for further comment.
Shenzhen police said a group of former Jasic workers who illegally entered the factory were being held for investigation. 

The Shenzhen ministry of public security and the detention center where the workers are being held did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

ACTIVISTS HARASSED
The authorities have been keeping close tabs on the factory workers, students and other supporters, according to interviews and eyewitness accounts.
The students -- who are renting accommodation near the Jasic factory – say they have had to move three times, as police pressure landlords to evict them.
People who appeared to be plain clothes police were keeping a close eye on the building where the activists were staying during a recent visit by Reuters.
The activists said police had also set up a fake factory recruitment stand outside the building and infiltrated into the group a mole posing as a former factory worker. 

The factory workers and their supporters communicated with Reuters through multiple phone numbers and WeChat accounts that were continuously shut down.
China does not publish official statistics on numbers of worker protests and strikes.

DIRE CONDITIONS
Former workers at Jasic, which employs more than 1,000 people, say conditions in the company’s factory are dire.
“Sometimes we would work for one month straight without any time off,” said Huang Lanfeng, 25, a former Jasic employee who was detained for protesting. 

“They wouldn’t let us freely quit and they even watched us go to the toilet.”
She added: “I’ve worked at a lot of factories and none were as bad as Jasic.”
Geoffrey Crothall, communications director at the Kong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin, said the protests could resonate at other factories.
“It certainly has the potential to be replicated if the workers from another factory are similarly motivated and well organized,” he said.
The Communist Party has pushed for unions to better protect workers, but the efforts were “superficial”, he said.
“It really does impinge on the party’s legitimacy.”

HARSH TREATMENT
As of Sunday, 15 of the detained workers and supporters had been freed. 

Four detainees told Reuters they were treated harshly in detention, with police threatening them with death and saying they would not be released unless they confessed.
The workers’ accounts jibe with stories from detained advocates in other incidents and follow an established pattern of Chinese police interrogation, according to Patrick Poon, a Hong Kong-based researcher at Amnesty International.
The detentions have become an even greater rallying cry for the activists.
“What started out as a labor dispute turned into unfair dismissals and police abuse which has galvanized supporters from both around the country and around the world,” Shen told Reuters on August 6, before she was taken away in the car.