"Forced Labor Whistleblower Was Sent To Prison By Amazon Supply Chain Foxconn" 22 June 2021

According to the criminal judgement of the People’s Court of Zhengxiang District, Hengyang City, Hunan Province, Tang Mingfang used to be an employee of Hengyang Futaihong Precision Industry Co., Ltd., was detained in prison because of reporting Foxconn’s forced student labor internship to China Labor Watch(CLW). After examining the reports published by CLW, Amazon conducted an investigation and confirmed that CLW’s report of illegal use of students existed. Amazon required Foxconn to improve workers’ working and living conditions, to  increase workers’ wages by RMB 1,407,039, and to dismiss the supervisor of the factory as well as the human resources manager. However, Foxconn took its revenge on Tang Mingfang subsequently, by accusing him of infringing on business secrets law on September 11 in 2019. Tang MingFang was detained under criminal law by Chinese Public Safety. According to Foxconn’s testimony, the Hengyang Court sentenced Tang Mingfang to two years in prison on July 1, 2020. 

China Labor Watch believes that this is a ridiculous verdict. The “loss” in this case is the reasonable wages that Foxconn should have paid the workers according to the law, while the report by China Labor Watch only allows the workers to receive their legal wages. To use this as a basis for sentencing is to protect the factory’s illegal practice of oppressing workers and to suppress labor rights. [...]