Overseas Chinese Democracy Coalition News and Article Release Issue: A59-G19
中国民主运动海外联席会议新闻与文章发布号：A59-G19
Release Date: April 13, 2004
发布日：2004年4月13日
Topic: Wei JingSheng Speaks at the 60th UNHCHR about Chinese Migrant Workers
标题：魏京生在第60届联合国人权会议上谈中国农民工的苦难
Original Language Version: English (Chinese version at the end)
此号以英文为准（英文在前，中文在后）
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Wei JingSheng Speaks at the 60th UNHCHR about Chinese Migrant Workers
On April 13, 2004, 11:30am, Mr. Wei Jingsheng speaks at UNHCHR to about 700 people about Chinese migrant workers' suffering. The audience includes the delegates from more than 100 countries, UN organizations and many NGO's members. The following is his speech.
Commission on Human Rights
60th Session
Geneva, 15 March - 23 April 2004
Item 14: specific group and individuals
Delivered by: Wei Jingsheng
Thank you Mr. Chairman,
My name is Wei Jingsheng. I am speaking here on behalf of the Transnational Radical Party also as member of its General Council. Today, I want to brief the Commission on Chinese migrating workers' suffering.
China has approximately 780 million peasants. Between 180 and 350 million are estimated to be "excessive" or in "dire poverty" and available for urban employment. Ten to twenty million will enter the non-agricultural workforce each year during the next two decades, in addition to the more than 100 millions of them now. These migrant workers are almost all from poor places in the countryside and thus they are also called "peasant workers".
They do the hardest and dirtiest jobs in the cities, yet treated as second-class citizen and live at the lowest level of the metropolitan community. Just to make their own way of survival, they have to spend tens thousands dollars to buy "temporary residency card" in order to stay in the cities where they work.
The unique feature of the Chinese peasants workers came out of a system of government-engineered labour exploitation on a scale that is unmatched in the present global economy. China's comprehensive regimentation of its young migrant factory workers uses internal pass controls that prevent workers from moving their permanent residence from impoverished villages to factory towns and cities and turn ordinary workers into highly exploitable outcasts in their own country.
Migrant workers usually work under unsafe or even toxic environment, with much less and even no welfare at all. According to the official statistics in 2003, there were 25 million migrant workers working without any protection at places where toxic air and/or excessive dust were constantly present.
Migrant workers usually work long hours with very low pay that is often delayed or they are even unpaid for months or even years. As of 2003, an official report revealed that the amount of unpaid salary to migrant workers was as much as 10 billion Yuan in the entire country. This is very significant for many who came from poor countryside where annually house income was less than 2000 Yuan.
Tragedies happened often when asking for unpaid salary but being refused. An official report pointed out that there were over 100 suicide accidents involving unpaid migrant workers in the Pearl River delta region during 2003.
The migrant workers have very little help from the government and there is no independent labour union to protect their rights. As a result, their rights are often severely violated and they have no place to go for justice. Their children have trouble to get into schools (usually asked to pay more; many were rejected for admission). Young girls were locked up in the factories during the days and in their dorms in the nights. When a fire broken out, they died in dozens, even hundreds for unable to escape from the locked doors. These migrant workers also are the most likely victims of the government's repatriation program which produced many wrongfully treatments even deaths and was only cancelled recently after major public outcries.
China's ratification of the International Covenant of Economic, Social and cultural Rights did not include the possibility to allow the existence of independent unions to defend workers basic rights among which their wages. They are not permitted to strike. The full force of state terror - beatings, imprisonment, psychiatric internment, and torture - is deployed against their attempts to exercise their right of association. The Chinese government-controlled media did all they could to cover up and not report workers protests around the country, although it is believed that thousands of workers protests have taken place annually.
Conflict of interests between peasant workers and city workers, especially these who are unemployed, made further discrimination and problems in between. In the year of 2003, there were still over 30 million laid-off workers in the cities all over China, affecting direct family members of over 100 million.
The year of 2003 is one of the worst years for worker's health and safety: 132,830 deaths are reported from January to October 2003, many of which are migrant workers.
One of the worst accidents is the explosion of a natural gas well in Kaixian, Chongqing on December 23, 2003. Because of low quality drilling and unqualified technical personnel was unable to control the accident at an early stage, over a thousand people were killed during the accident (mostly by hydrogen sulphide gas poisoning) and more than ten thousand people were injured.
Furthermore, death rate from underground coalmines remains to be the highest in China than the rest of the world. It is estimated that there are at least 5000 such deaths each year.
Mr. Chairman,
With various mechanisms for artificially suppressing workers' bargaining power, Chinese workers live under conditions that neutral researchers (and Chinese officials themselves) describe as "bestial," "horrific," and "abominable." Their rights of freedom, rights of association and unionization, are all denied by the suppressive government. What is happening to them often does not even fit China's own labour law. Nevertheless, the Chinese government turns a blind eye on it, systematically and purposefully.
On behalf of the Transnational Radical Party, I call upon to this Commission to fully investigate Chinese migrant workers' sufferings and to urge the Chinese government to abandon its practice of discriminations allowing these migration workers the enjoyment of their equal rights and dignity.
I thank you.
魏京生在第60届联合国人权会议上谈中国农民工的苦难
2004年4月13日上午11时30分钟，魏京生先生在第60届联合国人权会议上的正式会议上发言。给与会的上百各国间代表团，联合国各机构，及各非政府组织共约700名人士讲述了中国农民工的苦难。以下是他的发言。
我是魏京生，代表跨国激进党发言。我谈的是中国农民工的问题。
中国有7.8亿农民。有1.8-3.5亿的农民处于极度贫困或贫困的状态。今后20年内，估计每年会有一千到两千万农民转入劳力市场。他们被叫做“农民工”。
他们承担了城市里最苦最脏的工作，被视为二等公民。他们不得不花几万人民币购买“暂住证”。就象过去的南非黑人一样，处处受到歧视。
这种特殊的身份来源于中国的不公平的户口管理制度。这种管理制度使得农民工在自己的国家里，不能享受一个公民的正常地位。不能在自己的国家里合法地居住和工作。在南非结束了种族隔离之后的今天，中国对农民的这种歧视，是一个由国家推行的极其可耻的大规模的系统化的歧视，在世界上独一无二。
农民工经常在不安全和有毒的环境下工作，有时没有福利。根据去年官方统计，有两千五百万农民工在没有劳动保护、环境极其恶劣的条件下工作。每年有一万多起中毒事故，和无数的工伤事故和死亡。去年夏天，来自浙江绍兴的30多名农民工由于在户外劳动过久而中暑死亡。仅在一月到十月之间，就有13万人因事故而伤亡。中国矿工的死亡率一直是世界最高，估计每年在5千人以上。
他们通常超时工作，而工资非常低廉。即使这样微薄的工资，还经常拖延支付几个月甚至几年。例如，在包头市某饭店打工的某农民工，每天工作12个小时，每个月只有150元人民币的收入。根据官方报道，去年全国拖欠农民工工资的总数已达到100亿元人民币。这是个巨大的数字，因为农民每户平均年收入只有两千元。
他们追讨拖欠工资时，常有悲剧发生。例如，今年一月河南农民工李自豪被迫企图自杀；湖北胡卫国被迫从北京的高架桥上跳下；去年12月黑龙江农民工徐殿品因为讨要拖欠工资，被雇主严重打伤。据官方统计，去年仅在珠江三角州地区，就有100多起因拖欠工资而自杀的事件。
以上种种，都是因为工人没有组织独立工会的权利。中国政府在签署联合国有关经济文化的国际公约时，删去了允许独立工会存在的部分。没有独立工会，工人包括农民工的权利和利益经常遭到侵犯，没有申诉的机会，更得不到公正的处理。甚至孩子上学也必须支付更多的学费。一些年轻的女工，长期被锁在工厂里。一旦发生火灾，数十人乃至数百人死亡是经常的事情。城市当局还定期遣返过剩的农民工，遣返过程很不人道，经常造成死亡。
造成工人和农民工地位低下、处境悲惨的原因之一，是没有独立工会来保护工人的基本权利。他们如果想要罢工，无一例外，会遭到镇压，包括监禁、人身攻击、肉体折磨等等。虽然每年有上千起工人示威，政府控制的媒体总是千方百计地掩盖事实、不予报道。
此外，农民工和一般工人之间的冲突，类似于西方的本国公民和外国移民的冲突。在政府的纵容之下，造成了比西方国家更严重的歧视和社会问题。
所有这些，都不符合中国的法律。但是中国政府对此一贯视而不见。
在这里，我敦促联合国人权委员会对中国农民工的遭遇做全面调查，以便促使中国政府废除任何歧视政策，允许农民工维护自己的尊严和平等，得到公正待遇，并拥有他们基本的权利。
谢谢倾听。
（魏京生基金会首发，请注明出处。）