Tuesday 23 October 2012

What happened to the families of the drowned cocklepickers of Morecambe Bay?

On the three-hour bus trip from the southern port city of Xiamen to central Fujian province, you move into a landscape of largely abandoned villages, once the homes of so many departed Chinese migrants. Here, around Fuzhou and the counties of Lianjiang, Changle, Fuqing and Putian, tens of thousands of villagers have left in the past three decades, driven away by low agricultural incomes and land developments that left them without compensation or livelihood. Seeking new ways to survive, they headed in waves for Japan, the US and Europe, including the UK.

These villages, mainly occupied by the elderly, contain a mixture of old, shabby farmhouses and new mansions, built with money sent home by undocumentedmigrant workers toiling in sweatshop factories, restaurants, takeaways and building sites. They are also the hometowns of the cocklepickers who drowned at Morecambe Bay in 2004.

More than 40 Chinese workers were picking cockles there in the evening of 5 February 2004, sent by their recruiter and manager, Ah Ren, who was facing fierce competition from other Chinese teams along the Bay. To maximise profits, Ah Ren cut out the local middleman and gangmaster who bought cockles from him and controlled the production. That meant working against tidal charts and safety rules, which no one in the supply chain cared about as far as "foreign workers" were concerned.

At 8.30pm, two hours after they should have been told to leave the Bay, the workers realised the tide had come up too fast for them to escape. They were stranded between deep, water-filled gullies. With no sign of rescue, the workers began calling their families. They cried, and said goodbye. Some drowned before their families could call back.

The bodies of 21 men and women, aged 18 to 45, were recovered from the Bay in the days that followed. The 22nd, Liu Qinying, wasn't found until autumn 2010. One was never found. All but one of the victims were from Fujian. Their families lost husbands, wives and parents, and were left owing mountains of debt to moneylenders.

I reported on the tragedy at the time and researched the background to the exploitation of Chinese migrant workers. After exchanging phone calls and letters with these families for several years, and helping to raise money to pay off their debts, I went to meet them.

In the Jiangkou township of Putian, I found Liying, the sister of Xu Yuhua, who drowned in Morecambe Bay with his wife Liu Qinying. Liying looked frail and worn out, but was strong in spirit, as she had been in her letters and phone calls. She had supported her orphaned nephew, Xu Bin, with the income from her job as an assistant to an overseas Chinese businessman. In fact, the whole family's livelihood – her father, sister, daughter and unemployed husband – depended on her. Xu Bin had studied hard and passed the university extrance exam. He wanted to fulfill his parents' ambition for him, and was planning to go to Britain to further his studies before building a career back home.

Liying and I went to visit a woman named Jinyun in her village near Fuqing. The winding lanes led to a semi-furnished two-storey house where she lived with her entire family. We talked on an old couch set against the concrete walls. I had been exchanging letters with Jinyun and her two sons, who were in high school when their father, Lin Guo Guang, drowned in Morecambe Bay. "Guo Guang's first job in England was on a building site where he got paid £40 a day," Jinyun said. "That was why he resorted to cockling." Jinyun has brought up her sons on her own, working as a nanny and earning £60 a month. By summer 2009, she had managed to pay off half the debt of 200,000 yuan (£20,000) left by her husband (the remainder was paid by donations from the UK). "I pretend he's still working in England and just hasn't sent money home," she said. "It's much easier than thinking he's gone forever."

Back in Putian, a town with few industries apart from the odd shoe and garment factory, Liying and I walked the dusty lanes to the local market where we met Mr and Mrs Lin, parents of Lin Zhifang, at 18 the youngest of those who drowned. They had come down from their home in the mountains to sell dragon eyes (a fruit similar to lychees) and sugarcane. Mr Lin said they had stopped working the land as the income was too small to live on. Now they depend on selling fruit in the market for a living. "Zhifang had worked in a factory for two years before leaving. He was our eldest son, and what he wanted most was to build a house for the family," Mr Lin said. "He could never have done it working in Putian."

The burden of debt after Zhifang's death meant his younger brother had to work in the factory rather than go to university. Zhifang's mother couldn't speak much Mandarin but listened intently, and asked her husband to translate what she wanted to say. Several times she looked down, remembering the loss of her son, and wept.

Zhifang's parents seemed to have swallowed the pain of losing their son in such a modest way, as if misfortunes were inevitable for those born into the life of peasants. They had moved on and toiled away for the little cash that would keep them from starving. Their endless strength was humbling.

Liying and I then travelled to the outskirts of Fuzhou to see Yan Chun, the widow of Dong Xin Wu, who was 39 when he drowned. He had been a cobbler in Fuzhou and migrated to the UK to work for his family. Yan Chun lives in a village with her mother and mother-in-law, who suffers from dementia, and lives on state support of only 150 yuan (£15) a month. The cost of medication has been a huge burden, even after a medical insurance system was introduced: "It's a joke. Patients can only claim insurance if they are hospitalised, and then only 20% of the costs," a neighbour who helps look after Dong's mother told me.

Yan Chun works as a cleaner in an insurance company, earning up to £80 a month. Her son had wanted to serve in the army in Tibet, where he could earn 100,000 yuan and help clear the family's debts. (Most of the army in Tibet and Xinjiang, the "troubled regions", are recruited from the impoverished countryside.) But Yan Chun wouldn't let him go. She said she didn't want to lose him as well.

For the widows and families of the drowned workers, the future of the next generation has always been the overriding consideration. Yet it is hard to see what chance of a secure livelihood their children have in Fujian – and China. Fujian has always lagged behind the country as a whole; under Mao, the province was much neglected and received less than 2% of the nation's capital investment. Agriculture was the mainstay, but less than 10% of the province was arable. In the late 70s, before Deng Xiaoping's reforms, Fujian was ranked 23rd of 29 provinces in GDP. Since then, although poverty has been reduced, development initiatives have been concentrated in coastal cities such as Xiamen, while much of the countryside remains neglected and open to random land appropriation by developers.

What's left for the youth? As Liying and others kept saying: "There are few real jobs around here." In villages and townships, the main work options are in low-paid manufacturing and service industries. Even with a university education, jobs in the public sector are difficult to get: connections are the key.

When Jinyun's family had finally paid off its debts, she borrowed money and sent both her sons to study in Japan, where course fees are half those in the UK, to study and work in the catering trade. Her younger son met a Fujianese woman and got married. However, their plans were interrupted by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami – Jinyun was anxious and asked them to return to China. Now her younger son is working for a relative in the timber business; her elder son is jobless.

The desire for betterment still motivates many Fujianese to migrate. Today, the immigration cap on non-EU migrants has closed off legitimate routes, while the strengthening of the EU's border controls has made overland smuggling even more expensive. Given all this, many Fujianese parents look for other ways to send their children to Britain, often as students or asylum-seeking orphans.

Those who come as orphans are among Britain's most vulnerable young migrants. They leave home for the first time and arrive in a country they know little about as unaccompanied minors. They then claim asylum and are put into social care. Some may be granted refugee status; others disappear into the informal economy, where they tend to work in the lowest-paid jobs in catering and service industries and are exploited – just like their predecessors. When I look at these young men and women, I remember the tanned faces of the workers, kneeling down to rake the shiny black cockles under the sun and rain, in order to send money home.

As a Fujianese woman whose whole family had migrated told me: "Our migrating ancestors left us with this legacy: You mustn't sit and take what is thrown at you in life. You must always endeavour to improve your living standards. You must do better."

Tuesday 23 October 2012

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/22/drowned-chinese-cocklepickers-morecambe-bay

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Taiwan hospital fire kills 12, injures 60

TAINAN, Taiwan — At least 12 people were killed and 60 injured when an early-hours blaze tore through a hospital catering mainly to bed-ridden and mentally ill seniors in southern Taiwan on Tuesday, health authorities said.

The fire started in a nursing facility housing more than 100 elderly in Tainan city who were evacuated during the incident, a local health official said.

An earlier estimate by an official had placed the number of injured at 72 but the figure was revised down in a health department statement.

The cause of all the deaths was believed to be smoke inhalation while the injured were rushed to a dozen hospitals for treatment, the official said.

It was the worst hospital fire in recent years and the cause of the fire is under investigation, she added.

Fire officials said that the blaze possibly started in a storage room on the second floor of the five-storey building, a branch of the public Sinying Hospital.

Television footage showed the burnt-out second floor and bed-ridden and wheelchair-bound patients being carried out to the hospital's lawn.

"It was pitch black and the heavy smoke was unbearable, it's really horrifying," a survivor was quoted by the Central News Agency as saying.

The patient said he was lucky to escape the fire as he was able to walk on his own and was later rescued by firefighters.

Tainan mayor Lai Ching-te told reporters that the fire was unusually deadly because the hospital was in a relatively remote area and most of the patients were immobile.

Relatives of the patients rushed to the hospital seeking their whereabouts as health minister Chiu Wen-ta assured the public that the authorities will identify the dead and injured as soon as possible, according to TVBS cable news channel.

Chiu also announced that an island-wide check on fire equipment in all medical facilities will be conducted this week, though there has been no suggestion so far that faulty equipment was to blame for this incident.

A woman complained to reporters that she only learned about the fire on TV since the hospital failed to notify the patients' families, and that she was still unable to locate her relative after several hours.

By afternoon, some relatives had arrived at a local funeral home to identify the bodies of their loved ones as social and charity workers offered support.

The fire also raised concerns in the local media about whether staffing had been sufficient, as there were only six workers on night duty for the 70 patients.

Premier Sean Chen expressed his shock at the incident and sent his condolences to the families of the victims, his office said in a statement.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gSmDJT-2Y9oVNjBLas2CvqZP72yQ?docId=CNG.5a983813907399a00445368df8c5e45c.d1

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At least eleven dead as floods take their toll

At least eleven people, including a five-year-old boy, have died in incidents related to heavy rainfall in the Eastern Cape according to provincial Disaster Management.

Disaster Management’s Captain John Fobian said among those the eleven confirmed drownings was a five-year-old boy from Buffalo Flats who had fallen into a stream on Sunday. His body was recovered an hour later near Duncan Village.

Fobian said an 11-year-old child had also drowned on Saturday after being swept away while crossing a river near Mthatha. He said four other people had also died in Mthatha, Kleinskool, Horseshoe Valley and Coffee Bay, while crossing rivers.

Last week a police officer and two relatives were travelling across the Cebula bridge when their car was washed away. Their bodies were later recovered. A Witteklip resident came across the body of a woman on the bank of the Van Stadens River gorge. Fobian said it was believed she had also died while attempting to cross the river higher upstream.

With regards to traffic Fobian said the Coastal route between Port Elizabeth and East London, the R72, had been reopened to light vehicles, but that any trucks, heavy or articulated vehicles were requested to still make use of the route via the N10 and then through Bedford, taking the R360 to Grahamstown or the R63 to Fort Beaufort and East London.

He said there were still reports of mudslides on the R72 and the roads, specifically around Boknes and Port Alfred were in bad condition due to flooding.

Fobian said the SA National Roads Agency, along with various contractors were busy inspecting the area of the N2 where a giant sink hole measuring at least 25m wide and 50m deep had formed, completely engulfing a section of the road and preventing any thoroughfare.

It is estimated that the road will take around three months to repair.

Fobian said while rain had for the most part abated, areas were still saturated and requested people to exercise caution, especially when crossing low level bridges or streams.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

http://www.metronewspaper.co.za/2012/10/22/at-least-eleven-dead-as-floods-take-their-toll/

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Further exhumations have come to an end

The bodies of further 2 victims of the Smolensk air crash, exhumed today in Warsaw, have been brought to the Cracow Forensic Medicine Institute. They are to be transported today to Wroclaw, after they have been examined with a tomograph.

In Cracow the coffins are to be opened in accordance with the protocol and the bodies will be examined with a computed tomograph. Then the bodies will be transported to Wroclaw where an autopsy will be carried out and DNA samples will be taken. Prosecutor captain Marcin Maksjan from the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office explains that it may happen within the next 2 days.

Early in the morning in Warsaw there were 2 exhumations of the victims of the Smolensk air crash - one of them was in the Temple of Divine Providence and the other one - in the Powazki Cemetery. According to the media, one of the exhumed victims might be the last President in exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski.

The decision concerning the exhumations was made ex officio after an analysis of the medical documentation concerning 2 bodies and after comparing them with the evidence. It turned out that there was quite a lot of doubt as to the identity of the bodies. There is also a suspicion that once again the bodies have been swapped.

"We do not conceal the fact that there is doubt as to the identity of the bodies. It is probable that due to the wrong identification of the 2 bodies they have been buried in wrong graves," said prosecutor Maksjan.

It turns out that the investigators are planning further exhumations. By the end of 2012 2 further exhumations of the bodies of the Smolensk air crash victims are to be carried out.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

http://freepl.info/3157-further-exhumations-have-come-end

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