China rescues 30 disabled workers enslaved at illegal brick kilns

Chinese police have rescued 30 mentally handicapped people who were forced to work as virtual slaves at brick kilns in a poor central province, and have detained eight people including a 14-year-old factory supervisor, state media said on Wednesday.

Some of those rescued from the kilns in Henan province were blind and mute, while others were unable to say where they had come from, compounding the police's difficulty at returning them home.

"Some of them can't even speak a whole sentence, and they don't act like normal people," Liu Weiming, deputy director of publicity in Zhumadian, . The workers were found in Zhumadian, the China Daily reported.

"Most are staying at a relief station because they can't remember where they are from," Liu said.

Police acted on a tip-off and raided the kilns to rescue the workers, who were from four Henan counties, reports said.

Father's desperate searchPolice said some had been working without pay for more than seven years, the China Daily said.

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The case recalled a scandal in 2007 that elicited public outrage when Chinese media found at least 1,000 people forced to work as slaves in brick kilns in Shanxi province, following a father's desperate search for his missing teenage son.

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After that case, the government vowed to root out the practice, but occasional media reports since of new slave cases show it has continued, in part due to the strong demand for construction materials to fuel China's real estate boom.

There have been several other similar incidents since.

Some Chinese traffickers deliberately targeted mentally handicapped people from the poor countryside to lure them into employment contracts, according to Chinese media.