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Uyghurs Say Local Governments
Demand Free Labor
WASHINGTON, May 21,
2003--Local officials in China’s remote Xinjiang
Autonomous Region are coercing members of the Muslim
Uyghur minority to perform manual labor for the
government without pay, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.
The practice, confirmed by Xinjiang officials and
known in the Uyghur language as “hasha,” aims
primarily to secure labor that local villages cannot
afford to hire.
“In the other provinces in China where there has been
rapid economic development, ‘hasha’ was phased out
long ago,” an agricultural official in the Xinjiang
regional government told RFA’s Uyghur service. “But
here in Xinjiang, we still need it.”
Another regional official described the practice as
occurring predominantly among peasants in the southern
part of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region--one of the
poorest regions of China. “I myself worked on the
‘hasha’ scheme when I lived there,” said the official,
who asked not to be named.
These officials, along with Uyghur residents of
Xinjiang interviewed for this story, said village
authorities essentially conscript Uyghur men and women
of all ages for a variety of jobs that they cannot
afford to hire workers to perform. These include
road-building, irrigation, agriculture, and
construction. Uyghurs are usually employed in this
manner for about 50 days a year, sporadically or
consecutively, with thousands of people conscripted
annually, villagers say.
The work is generally organized by Uyghur village
leaders at the request of local governments, and
laborers face fines of between 30 and 60 yuan daily (about
five dollars U.S.) if they fail to show up, officials
and Uyghurs in Xinjiang said in separate interviews.
Those most often coerced into providing free labor are
from Aksu, Kashgar, and Khoton prefectures--in
Chinese, Akesu, Hashe, and Hetian,
respectively--Xinjiang residents say.
“At the moment, there is no money to pay the peasants.
The money given to the government is very limited. We
already have to use the little we have for flood
prevention and other public works,” the agriculture
official said. Public attention to the issue might
boost political will to change the system, he said.
A spokesman for the International Labor Organization
(ILO) in Washington said the Geneva-based organization
was aware of forced labor in remote regions of China,
although he declined to comment specifically about the
“hasha” system. Central government officials in
Beijing indicated that they were unaware of it.
The agricultural official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, attributed the “hasha” system to problems
in reforming China’s tax system. Peasants in China are
currently overtaxed by a locally imposed system of
fees, charges, and levies, often by corrupt officials.
Pressure to reform the system first came after local
Communist Party cadres warned then Premier Zhu Rongji
that unrest caused by the “peasant burden” could
spiral out of control. The central government has
moved since then to implement a new system of taxation
in some areas of China, although progress has been
painfully slow.
But these changes, according to the agricultural
official in the Xinjiang government, have been slow to
arrive in Xinjiang, especially in the southern areas,
where local government coffers are chronically empty.
He added, however, that reform was on the way. “As
soon as the tax reforms are carried out in southern
Xinjiang [and the government has money], ‘hasha’ labor
will definitely be eliminated in Xinjiang as it has
been in the other provinces in China,” said the
official.
One man, a native of Kashgar who is in his 30s, said
his continuing "hasha" assignments consisted of
dredging and widening a river and irrigating fields.
“For one month out of every year for three years,”
said another man in his 40s, also from Kashgar, “we
were forced to open up land that had never been
settled before--it was just wilderness. We were also
forced to build houses for Han Chinese immigrants who
were resettling in the area.”
China uses forced prison labor as an officially
sanctioned form of legal punishment. For this reason,
it is one of just 10 member countries to decline to
sign two ILO conventions on eliminating forced labor.
Since the fast-paced economic reforms of the late
1990s, reports of underground private sweatshops using
slave labor have also surfaced in the news media, and
have occasionally been the target of official
investigations. However, official embarrassment
ensures that no statistics are reported and the true
size of the problem is unknown.
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who lack regular access to full and balanced reporting
in their domestic media. Through its broadcasts and
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in 1994 and incorporated in 1996, RFA currently
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Mandarin, the Wu dialect, Vietnamese, Tibetan (Uke,
Amdo and Kham) and Uyghur. It adheres to the highest
standards of journalism and aims to exemplify accuracy,
balance and fairness in its editorial content.
Copyright © 2001-2003 Radio Free Asia.
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