Sichuan police have arrested the manager of a private shelter for the homeless on charges of selling residents, some of whom were mentally disabled, as forced laborers to a remote factory, State media said yesterday.
Zeng Lingquan was arrested Monday for allegedly selling 11 residents of his center in Quxian County in Sichuan Province to the Jiaersi Green Construction Material Chemical Factory in the far western region of Xinjiang.
Police began investigating after the Xinjiang Metropolitan News visited the factory to check a report that the factory was using mentally disabled workers.
The report said the workers were given no protective equipment and ate the same food as the factory leader s dogs.
The factory owner, Li Xinglin, who thought he was being interviewed for a story on pollution, told the newspaper his workers were from the unlicensed center in Quxian.
Zeng had opened the center as a shelter for beggars. It was known locally as a disabled self-reliance group and served as an adoption agency for physically and mentally disabled people, the official Xinhua News Agency quoted officials as saying.
Police were still hunting Li after he fled the factory Sunday with about 12 of his workers. Li s wife was in police custody.
The newspaper said it believed eight of the 11 unpaid workers at the factory were mentally disabled.
Police had investigated Zeng in 2007 for suspected human trafficking in connection with the death of a beggar who was sold to a brick kiln in the central province of Hunan, other reports said.
In May 2009, police in the eastern province of Anhui arrested 10 men for allegedly enslaving more than 30 mentally handicapped people who were forced to work at brick kilns.
(SD-Agencies)
