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Chinese Laborers Enslaved During WW II Sue Japanese Enterprises
Five Chinese laborers from Hebei Province held a news briefing in Beijing at 10:00 a.m, August 23, suing 16 Mitsui Companies and four Mitsubishi Companies in the United States, accusing them of their fascist crimes of forcibly carrying off and enslaving Chinese laborers during World War II and claimed compensation. While in five hours prior to this, four former Chinese laborers residing in the United States also formally sued Japanese Mitsui Companies in San Francisco, California.
As Chinese scholars disclosed, during Japan's invasion of China, countless Chinese people were forced to become laborers. They were subjected to Japan's inhuman enslavement, innumerable workers were tortured to death. The survivors were also covered with scars. Reference materials discovered last year in Qingdao Archive office concerning Japanese troops' transport of laborers from Qingdao to northeast China and Japan during of the war of resistance show that from 1939 to the first half of 1944, Japanese troops transferred 740,000 laborers from Qingdao.
The representatives of the plaintiffs of Wednesday's prosecution are: Liu Zhanyi, Li Yunde, Zhang Peilin, Li Taojing, Hou Shulin. They have three reasons: forced, slavish labor; illegal, ill-gotten money; issuing no wages and giving no compensation. Their demands are: group prosecution, handing over the ill-gotten money, reissuing wages, giving damage compensation and so on.
The class action lawsuit lodged by Chinese laborers against Japanese enterprises received support from the strong lawyer group formed by four famous lawyers' offices in New York. American Chinese organization, San Francisco World Anti-Japanese War Historical Fact Safeguarding Association provided the plaintiffs with aid. In addition, the plaintiff group also employed prosecution advisors, Chinese law advisors and experts.
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