The working conditions are horrific. Up to eighteen working hours per day. Torture and political indoctrination is administered night and day. Abuses torture. The death rate is very high.
Regretfully, the LAOGAI are only a small part of the reality of life in China, today. Tens of thousands of forced abortions (article 49 of the Chinese Penal Code). Thousands of public executions, taking place in front of hundreds of people gathered for that purpose, including the parents of the victims and their schoolchildren. The horrific trade in human organs, taken from the executed prisoners and sold for high profits. Persecutions of thousands of believers of all Religious Faiths. The abuse of psychiatry for the purpose of political repression (article 90 of the Chinese Penal Code).
Several international Human Rights Organizations, the Committee of Social and Economic Rights of the United Nations and, recently, the US Congress, with a majority of 413 votes against 1, have condemned the LAOGAI and the ongoing violation of human rights in China.
Nevertheless, the business world and most governments continue doing business with China and enter into cultural and political agreements with that country. The mass media describe China as a country with a fast growing economy and an improving and promising social progress. Therefore, a wide consensus is being created for a country where there is a party dictatorship oppressing and exploiting its own people for the mere economic advantage of a small Party Nomenclature.
Who is benefiting out of this?
We are told that trade with China shall improve the human rights situation in that country. Facts confirm an opposite view. What are increasing in China, today, are political repression, abuses, torture and imprisonment. Official figures refer to 58000 popular revolts in 2003 and 74000 in 2004. These are not intellectuals or students playing "the revolution game" from their sitting rooms, these are genuinely starving people! Incidentally, why this hypothesis of using trade to improve human rights was never considered for South Africa, Burma or Iraq where sanctions were immediately imposed?
We are also informed that trade with China will help to increase the standard of living of the Chinese people. Facts and history prove again an opposite reality. The wellbeing and richness, today, touches only a minority of the Chinese population, approximately 10-15%, namely party members. This has always been the case with all Communist Regimes since the USSR in 1920 until today's Communist Regime in China.
It is affirmed that the low cost of Chinese products helps, economically, the European and Italian families to improve their standard of living. It is not taken into account that one of the prime causes of today's economic crisis, in Italy and within the EU, is the tolerance shown by the European Commission and the European National Governments who have allowed the invasion of Chinese products into the EU markets. This has caused unemployment, bankruptcies, indebtedness of governments and firms and relocation of businesses. It is the normal people, the wage earners, who are the first victims of the "Chinese economic boom" as the large corporations buy cheaply in China, sell at high profits in the west and dismiss their costly European workers.
Therefore, commercial agreements with the Chinese dictatorship are not only immoral and unethical but are also economically counterproductive, in the long term.
The free market is a just and good thing provided there exist the same rules for everybody and there are the same ethical boundaries for everybody!
Numerous are the international conventions on labor and human rights, countersigned by at least 150 countries, including Italy, concerning free trade unionism, abolition of forced labor and the exploitation of child labor. Also the Italian Chamber of Deputies presented four motions on 14th January 2000. These motions asked the Italian Government to propose, within the EU, measures aimed at verifying that all products imported in the EU were produced from places and manufacturing sites respecting human and social rights of the working men and women and were not using child labor. The motions also asked that all commercial agreements with China be subordinated to the respect of human rights.
Also in the USA there are laws forbidding the import of products of forced labor? Regretfully, these are not always applied. Infact, the Wolf Resolution asked the US Government to implement the existing laws forbidding the import of products from the LAOGAI. The same Resolution condemned China for violating international agreements, to which China is a party, including the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention against Torture. <
What seems to be totally missing is the political will to apply existing laws and conventions and to take the necessary measures to protect human rights. Why so much inertia and so much disinterest?
As Congressman Smith pointed out, during a discussion at the Committee on Human Rights at the US Congress in May 1997, whilst the business world complains and demands action against China to protect trade marks, this doesn't happen when forced labor is concerned. Why? Perhaps, because forced labor is a source of high profits!
Who is really benefiting from this trade with China? The tens of millions of exploited Chinese workers? The hundreds of thousand of European unemployed workers and their families? Or, perhaps, simply the large corporations and the Totalitarian Chinese Regime?
If we observe the measures undertaken against the counterfeiting of trademarks and the sanctions imposed on Iraq, Burma and South Africa, we have all reason to think that the preoccupation of the international authorities for human rights is indirectly proportional to the interests of the multinational companies.
Let us remember that Solzhenitsyn, repeatedly, said that the Soviet regime could only survive thanks to the financial and technological support of the West. The same applies to China today. The Chinese Communist Regime needs western finance and technology to survive. Therefore, the only way to improve human rights in China and to enhance the standard of living of the Chinese people on one hand and to protect the social and economic future of the Italian and European people on the other hand, is to subject all commercial and political agreements with China to a real respect and protection of human rights.
As previously stated, the laws and regulations, exist already and Italy and the EU should (and can!) undertake a series of necessary measures:
1) Undertake a wide campaign to inform the public opinion on the impact that the "Chinese economic boom", which is the product of forced labor and of human exploitation, has and will further produce on our lives and, most importantly, on the lives of the future generations;
2) Unite with the US Congress to solicit a resolution of the UN Human Rights Commission condemning the system of the LAOGAI and the continued violation of human rights in China;
3) Approve laws forbidding the import to Italy and to the EU of products made, partially or totally, from forced labor. Further introduce a system of certification for all firms producing in China or importing Chinese products in the EU. Such system should enable the verification of the production and manufacturing sites that shall need to be inspected by EU Customs Inspectors and Inspectors from International Human Rights Organizations;
4) Demand the universal application of the "social and environmentalist clauses". Demand that all Chinese products imported in the EU possess the same parameters of hygiene and security requested from EU manufacturers.
5) Consider implementing import quotas and/or high VAT/import fees on all Chinese imports until there is an evident improvement in human rights and standard of living in China.
If necessary, impose an embargo on Chinese products. The lives of the Chinese and European people and social justice are much more important then the high profits of a few, already "super rich" political and economical elites!
Either action is taken now or human exploitation shall continue which will simply keep on making the few rich people even more rich and the large majority of non-rich people always more poor!
We must realise that history was made by men and that we, as such, can change it.
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