cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/6236953
"We were mistreated": Former worker at Chinese company in Serbia tells of 'forced labour experience'
- Suspicions of forced labor at the Chinese Linglong factory in Serbia emerged several years ago, when local and international organizations warned about it
- The EU issued a Resolution on forced labour in the Linglong factory and environmental protests in Serbia [opens pdf]
- MAN Truck & Bus had stopped taking tyres from Chinese Linglong’s Serbian plant already in 2024 after reports alleging the exploitation and possible trafficking of Vietnamese and Indian workers
- This week, The US banned the import of car tyres made by China’s Shandong Linglong Tire Co owing to suspicions that the company has used forced labour
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"What we experienced in Serbia was forced labor," Rafik Buks from India [said] ... During 2024, he worked on the construction of the Chinese Linglong factory in northern Serbia. "We were controlled, exploited and treated without dignity," says Buks.
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"We were under constant pressure, under threats, and there were even physical fights. We were forced to endure mistreatment," Buks said.
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He says that the agency they worked for sent them not only to the factory construction site, but also to other construction sites of Chinese companies in Serbia, "while Linglong later claimed that we never worked for them."
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Reports of 'slave labour' at Linglong came up immediately after Chinese company started its construction site in Zrenjanin in Serbia in 2021, when around 500 Vietnamese workers were building the first Chinese tire factory in Europe. Activists back then said their working conditions are inhumane: no money, no passports, no hot water.
"It's terrible. People there don't even have medical support," says Ivana Gordic, an investigative journalist who was the first to report on the Vietnamese laborers' living and working conditions.
Footage on the cable channel N1 shows dilapidated shacks on the outskirts of the city. They have the kind of beds you find in overcrowded prisons, and there are just two old bathrooms for hundreds of people. "There's no heating and the hot water in the boiler is enough for five people at most," Gordic [said].