Concern for Chinese metalworkers on trial

CHINA: The International Metalworkers' Federation is deeply concerned about charges of subversion which have been brought against Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang, workers' representatives in the four-year campaign against corruption, mismanagement and the resultant bankruptcy at the Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy Factory. The metalworkers had been demanding a basic living allowance, pension and back pay. Yao and Xiao and fellow workers, Pang Qingxiang and Wang Zhaoming, were detained in March 2002, and during this time their rights were repeatedly violated. Pang and Wang were finally released on bail in December. In letters of protest to the president of the People's Republic of China, Jian Zemin, and to the chairman of the All China Federation of Trade Unions, Wang Zhaoguo, the IMF general secretary, Marcello Malentacchi, stated the Liaoyang workers were only exercising their rights of freedom of association and collective bargaining as guaranteed by the International Labour Organisation's Conventions No. 87 and 98, and that as a member of the ILO, China had to guarantee its workers these established rights. Malentacchi also wrote in his letter to the All China Federation of Trade Unions that instead of assisting Yao and Xiao in their dispute with the factory management or supporting them now in their cases before the courts, "the ACFTU has abandoned them to a system that continues to ignore even the most fundamental workers' rights. Indeed, far from helping these workers, the ACFTU has actually worked against them and added to the unfounded allegations they face." The IMF joined the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in a formal complaint last March with the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association against the government of the People's Republic of China for violations of the principles of freedom of association. The trial against the two activists opens today, January 15.