Men cut off fingertips
Four workers cut off the tips of their little fingers at the west gate of Tsinghua University Sunday.
By Yang Jie
Four protesters who hacked the tops off their pinkies and swallowed the tips were forcibly expelled from Beijing Wednesday.
At about 2:30 pm, officials broke into a room where one of the men, Li Bo, was on the phone with the Global Times. After sounds of a struggle and screams, the line went dead.
The four men were taken by police and Hunan Province local government officials to Beijing West Railway Station.
"We were beaten on the way and I just learned we will be sent to Guilin in Guangxi rather than our hometown," Huang Qunyue texted the reporter.
Li Bo, Zhang Yongsheng, Huang Qunyue and Zhang Shen are desperate former employees of the Ningyuan county electric power bureau in the Hunan Province prefecture-level city of Yongzhou. They were fired on fabricated charges of absenteeism in December 2008, according to Li.
After failing to prove the bureau had lied to duck their responsibilities under the Labor Contract Law, the four men went to the west gate of Tsinghua University at about 3:30 pm Sunday and rested their hands on books by the sidewalk.
Then, in front of hundreds of bystanders, each in turn held a cleaver and brought it down firmly, severing the tops of their little fingers. As blood squirted across the tarmac, each then swallowed the severed tips.
"I felt so calm doing that," Li Bo said Wednesday, "as we have been driven from pillar to post."
The reason they chose Tsinghua was to attract the attention of "high-quality people who are usually full of a sense of justice," Li said.
Previously the four had applied for local labor arbitration, but the Yongzhou committee for labor disputes rebuffed them, claiming they never worked for the electric bureau.
On July 9 they filed a lawsuit against their employer, but the Hunan capital city court set it aside, allegedly telling them it would never deal with the case.
"We even received threats from local government officials who said 'We can have you ended for a mere 50,000 yuan ($7,382),'" Li alleged.
It was only after all legal avenues - petitions, courts and people's congress - appeared exhausted that the four men decided to head to the Beijing liaison office of Yongzhou.
"We decided at home without telling our families, and bought the kitchen knives in Beijing," Li said.
.
Four workers cut off the tips of their little fingers at the west gate of Tsinghua University Sunday.
By Yang Jie
Four protesters who hacked the tops off their pinkies and swallowed the tips were forcibly expelled from Beijing Wednesday.
At about 2:30 pm, officials broke into a room where one of the men, Li Bo, was on the phone with the Global Times. After sounds of a struggle and screams, the line went dead.
The four men were taken by police and Hunan Province local government officials to Beijing West Railway Station.
"We were beaten on the way and I just learned we will be sent to Guilin in Guangxi rather than our hometown," Huang Qunyue texted the reporter.
Li Bo, Zhang Yongsheng, Huang Qunyue and Zhang Shen are desperate former employees of the Ningyuan county electric power bureau in the Hunan Province prefecture-level city of Yongzhou. They were fired on fabricated charges of absenteeism in December 2008, according to Li.
After failing to prove the bureau had lied to duck their responsibilities under the Labor Contract Law, the four men went to the west gate of Tsinghua University at about 3:30 pm Sunday and rested their hands on books by the sidewalk.
Then, in front of hundreds of bystanders, each in turn held a cleaver and brought it down firmly, severing the tops of their little fingers. As blood squirted across the tarmac, each then swallowed the severed tips.
"I felt so calm doing that," Li Bo said Wednesday, "as we have been driven from pillar to post."
The reason they chose Tsinghua was to attract the attention of "high-quality people who are usually full of a sense of justice," Li said.
Previously the four had applied for local labor arbitration, but the Yongzhou committee for labor disputes rebuffed them, claiming they never worked for the electric bureau.
On July 9 they filed a lawsuit against their employer, but the Hunan capital city court set it aside, allegedly telling them it would never deal with the case.
"We even received threats from local government officials who said 'We can have you ended for a mere 50,000 yuan ($7,382),'" Li alleged.
It was only after all legal avenues - petitions, courts and people's congress - appeared exhausted that the four men decided to head to the Beijing liaison office of Yongzhou.
"We decided at home without telling our families, and bought the kitchen knives in Beijing," Li said.
.
