A disturbing footage has gone viral on social media allegedly showing a Chinese manager mercilessly beating African workers which has sparked an intense online debate about racism. The purported video, shared by journalist Dom Lucre, shows the Chinese employer yelling at the African workers and beating them with a whip and kicking them as they cover their heads to avoid any serious injury.
Describing the employer treating his employees like "trans-Atlantic slaves", Lucre wrote that viewers have begun discussing how the video shows that the Chinese are "far more racist" than the White men in Africa. The video has garnered over 17.3 million views on social media, and prompted a torrent of replies who were aghast and disturbed after watching the ill-treatment of employees.
Watch the video:
"Slavery still exists. The West makes a massive fuss about slavery that happened 200 years ago in America. They don't talk about the Slavery taking place all over the world right now," said one person on social media platform X. Another wrote, "You don’t beat your employees and those are just boys. It is sick and disgusting!"
"It's quite possible that they are (Chinese being more racist). America isn't the only country that has racism. What's scarier to think about is that we have Chinese nationalists crossing our border. They could be just like this guy," another netizen said. "The person who physically assaulted others clearly violates Chinese values. As a Chinese person, I hope he receive the legal punishment," wrote another.
Chinese ill-treatment of African workers
This is not the first time this issue has made headlines. As China runs numerous infrastructure projects in African regions, the assault and abuse of local employees by the Chinese project managers is highly prevalent, news agency ANI reported last year citing Geneva Daily. The report described African labourers being ill-treated, abused, forcefully made to work under dire conditions and given wages which are way below contract pay.
Last year, a Tanzanian woman named Lucy Paulo, who worked as a cook in Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) in the Mwanza region, suffered serious injuries after being assaulted by a Chinese national named Zheng Yuan Fen. The Chinese national was arrested and detained at the Railway Police Station, initially. He was later moved to Misungwi District Police Station.
In 2022, a China-run gold mining company in Zimbabwe was accused of ill-treating workers. The workers were not given decent meals or accommodation while on duty. They were also not given protective gear, exposing them to hazardous chemicals in the factory.
Rwanda in 2022 charged a Chinese businessman with torture and sentenced him to 20 years in prison after he was filmed beating a local worker who was tied to a pole last year. Shu Shunjun, was seen yelling at the Rwandan national and whipping him with a rope while other men in orange jackets watched.
This is not only limited to African workers. Earlier this year, South Korea's intelligence agency and researchers reported that at least 3,000 North Korean workers staged protests last month due to exploitative working conditions that have led to "incidents and accidents". The North Korean workers from a military-linked trading company were reportedly fed up with unpaid wages and pandemic-induced lockdowns, said two South Korean government-affiliated researchers.
Large-scale protests by North Koreans are virtually unheard of as China exercises near-complete control over the citizens with harsh penalties for dissent, and the researchers said it suggests these labourers are caught in a disagreement over their fate. China wants to send them home to comply with UN resolutions and avoid defections, but North Korea wants to maintain the number of labourers there.
(with inputs from ANI)
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