In the Pearl River Delta region near Hong Kong, factory workers lose or break 40,000 fingers on the job annually

Nearly a decade after some of the most powerful companies in the world began an effort to eliminate sweatshop labour conditions in Asia, worker abuse is still commonplace in many of the Chinese factories that supply Western companies, according to labour rights groups.

They are age-old stories. Women brought to the Bay Area from China with false promises of life in a far-off land, only to be trapped in prostitution. Latino men laboring in debt bondage on ranches and farms in inland valleys. These stories may be redolent of the Gold Rush and frontier days, but in fact are situations that have been uncovered in present-day California. Some call it human trafficking, perhaps to make the crime less disturbing to confront. We call it modern slavery. It must be stopped...

LOS ANGELES, (Xinhua) -- California is the top destination in the U.S. for human traffickers who force women and girls into hard labor and sex trade, local TV channel ABC 7 reported Wednesday.

A new report released by the state's anti-human trafficking task force shed light on how bad the problem is in California, and the team wants police and prosecutors to have more power to fight these crimes.

Though exact numbers don't exist, thousands are somehow brought in across the borders and coerced into the sex trade or hard labor, officials and activists said...

Background to News Release

GUANGZHOU, China -- The patients arrive every day in Chinese hospitals with disabling and fatal diseases, acquired while making products for America.

On the sixth floor of the Guangzhou Occupational Disease and Prevention Hospital, Wei Chaihua, 44, sits on his iron-rail bed, tethered to an oxygen tank. He is dying of the lung disease silicosis, a result of making Char-Broil gas stoves sold in Utah and throughout the U.S...

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