Feature
China: The human cost of the economic "miracle"
An estimated 150-200 million rural migrant workers are facing widespread discrimination in China. They are denied access to health care and education, and often live in inhumane, overcrowded conditions. Furthermore, they are routinely exposed to some of the most exploitative working conditions. “China’s so-called economic ‘miracle’ comes at a terrible human cost – rural migrants living in the cities experience some of the worst abuse in the work place...They are forced to work long stretches of overtime, often denied time off even when sick, and labour under hazardous conditions for paltry wages.”
Human Rights in the People's Republic of China: Overview
Excerpts from Amnesty International's Annual Report 2007
There was progress towards reform in some areas as China made a number of human rights-related pledges but this failed to have a significant impact as widespread human rights abuses continued throughout the country:
- An increased number of lawyers and journalists were harassed, detained, and jailed
- Many human rights defenders were subjected to lengthy periods of arbitrary detention without charge and members of their families were increasingly targeted
- Thousands of people were sentenced to death or executed, many after unfair trials
- Torture and ill-treatment remained widespread
- The government strengthened systems for blocking, filtering, and monitoring the flow of information
- Rural migrant workers were deprived of basic rights (see below for more information)
- Thousands of people who pursued their faith outside officially sanctioned churches were harassed, detained, and imprisoned
- Severe repression of the ethnic group Uighurs in the region of Xinjiang continued
- Freedom of religion and expression continued to be severely restricted in Tibet and among Tibetans elsewhere
See http://thereport.amnesty.org/eng/Regions/Asia-Pacific/China for the entire section on China from the Annual Report 2007 – please note that the report pertains to events in 2006
Updated: 30 April 2008