Mainland Media

Mining Accidents in Prison Camp

On 6 October 2006, the website of the State Administration of Coal Mine Safety (SACMS) released a short article, which reported that “a gas explosion took place at 3 am, on 6 October at Zhongpingtong mine of Furong Coal Mine in Yibin city, Sichuan province, southwest of China. The coalmine is owned by the state and has all required licenses to operate; its annual capacity is designed at 1.2 million tons. 13 miners’ bodies have been found and seven others were injured. The rescue work has ended.”

This piece of news is, at first glance, not shocking, since China has the world's worst mine safety record. However, upon deeper investigation, the story is not as simple as the SACMS claimed.

A forced-labour prison

The Furong coalmine is state-owned, but is also run by the South Sichuan Municipal Prison. In September 2004, Radio Free Asia conducted an interview with some ex-prisoners and staff at the coalmine to investigate the working conditions there [NOTE 1] . Mr Chen, an ex-prisoner, told the reporter that he was put into an isolated cell when he refused to work at the mine. Prisoners as well as ordinary staff at the coalmine revealed that each person would have a quota to meet each day and if they could not finish the quota they would be physically punished. An official said prisoners received only three Yuan per month while a large sum of money would be taken by a small number of officials, in violation of clause 6, article 14 of the PRC’s prison law. A cadre at the coalmine admitted that the coalmine made a profit but refused to comment how the profit was allocated. He also claimed that prisoners were all treated well. An ex-prisoner said he was sentenced to nine years for a robbery of some 200 Yuan and he suspected that the prison authority used long prison terms to keep the cost of labour low. The South Sichuan Municipal Prison reportedly holds 4,000 to 5,000 prisoners who are split into three groups, two of which are assigned to work at the coalmine.

Though the Chinese government refuses to admit any industrial accident took place in forced prisoner camp and SACMS would never publish figures of this type, IHLO found a document issued by the Ministry of Justice to all provincial justice bureaus and prison authorities discussing an accident that took place on 15 December 2001 in the same South Sichuan municipal prison [NOTE 2] . According to that official document, 340 prisoners and 15 staff members of the prison were working at the mine when a blast took place at 6:25 am. Nine prisoners were killed and five were injured. The Ministry of Justice issued the document to remind all labour camps to ensure safety, especially in the winter, when coal was in serious demand.

How should the prisoners’ families be compensated?

According to the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, the victims' families have still not received compensation after mine managers refused to meet their demand for 200,000 yuan (US$25,000) each, a standard compensation for a life in China’s constant mining accident. A week after the October 6 accident, a lawyer posted a message on an internet discussion forum under the title “Who should protect the criminals’ health rights and their rights to live?” [NOTE 3] He revealed that one family of the victims had hired him to represent them in order to claim higher compensation, after knowing that they would only receive 11,000 Yuan as compensation. When the lawyer talked to the authorities at South Sichuan Municipal Prison, the chief told him that the real death toll was 17 and that prisoners were deprived of the usual compensation terms guaranteed by the SACMS and their civil rights to pursue the case. The prison chief also showed the lawyer verdicts from previous cases, in which prisoners’ families sued the prison for higher compensation and lost the lawsuits.

However, the prison chief was in fact highlighting a violation of China’s Prison Law, Article Three of which reads “A prison shall, with regard to prisoners, implement the principle of combining punishment with reform and combining education with labour, in order to transform them into law-abiding citizens.” In other words, whether they are law-abiding or not, prisoners are considered as citizens by the prison law and the prison authority has no rights to interpret the prison terms to deprive them of their civil rights. The lawyer’s question was then supported by other internet users and readers.

While the officials kept claiming that the prisoners are well-treated and that their safety is guaranteed, both incidents indicate the exact opposite. Why were the prisoners working at 3 am and 6 am when the accidents happened? Couldn’t the prisoners have rest at night? Why were only prisoners but no prison police killed in either accident? Why didn’t SACMS mention the true nature of the coalmine when it first reported the accident on its website? Has somebody answered the victims’ families and lawyer’s on the rightful compensation for prisoners?

IHLO

June 2007

Notes