Yuncheng (AsiaNews) – The police of Shanxi have released a group of migrants from slavery.  The migrants were being forced to work in a brickyard in Yuncheng. Police officials said there were at least 30 people in the brickyard: for two months, they were made to work for more than 18 hours a day without pay: all they got was a cup of boiled cabbage after each shift.

The Shanxi Evening News broke the news, saying a boy managed to escape from his slave drivers and to go to alert the police in Yanhu district. As soon as they saw the policemen coming into the brickyard, the migrants started to "cry silent tears of pain", according to one policeman. "They were living worse than slaves".

Official sources said the workers – aged between 15 and 60 years, men and women – came from the south-west province of Sichuan: the owners of the brickyard would lock them up at night to prevent their escape. It was confirmed that they had been subjected to "continued physical and verbal abuse": one of the migrants was taken to hospital. His captors broke his arm because he tried to escape.

There are around 150 million migrant workers in China who are forced to leave their homes in rural areas because of extreme poverty. They move to urban centres where they are forced to work for very low salaries, even by Chinese standards, and to inhumane timetables. These workers have become China's main workforce in the construction and manufacturing sectors.