Israeli scam exposed

Hostage-taking in Caribbean result of illegal funds charged by Israeli employers

Taken from YNet news, Israel, 18.10.08
By Hanna Zohar

Three hundred Chinese workers decided to break the law and take the Israeli representatives of a construction company hostage until they get their money back. These workers paid a total of $4.5 million ($15,000 each) even before they started working – the money was divided among the various Chinese and Israeli intermediaries. We can assume that the construction company also got its share – as we know, there are no suckers around here.

The right to work is a basic universal right. Therefore, international conventions and laws in most countries forbid employers from demanding fees from employees in exchange for giving them work. Yet when it comes to those 300 Chinese workers, as well as the millions of workers who travel from eastern countries to the West, the conventions and laws do not offer much help.

It’s a fact. They pay thousands of dollars only because they hope for a high salary that will cover the debts they accumulated and enable them to save up some money and raise their standard of living upon their return to their homeland.

A Chinese construction worker employed by Israeli construction companies pays more than $20,000 even before coming here. Construction corporations are in fact manpower companies that got a license to bring laborers to Israel and arrange construction jobs for them. Before they were set up, in 2006, the workers paid sums ranging from $6,000 to $10,000.

By law, these corporations are not allowed to charge workers more than $1,000 for hiring them. The corporations pay the State tens of thousands of shekels for their license, and in addition are asked to provide significant financial guarantees in case the workers do not get paid. These high sums of money paid by the corporations have been passed on to the workers, which is why they need to pay much more today.

No such corporation has been sued to this day for charging illegal sums from workers. Moreover, no corporation was asked to pay the guarantees for worker salaries, even though hundreds of workers have complained that they have not been paid. What we have here is not only a case of the government turning a blind eye – knowingly and deliberately in my view – to the charging of illegal funds, but also criminal cooperation with the corporations in avoiding to use the guarantees to pay workers.

Israeli workers also charged illegally
In June 2007, a plan for bringing laborers from Thailand through a UN-affiliated group was supposed to get underway, with the purpose of preventing the high payments handed over by workers to intermediaries (Thai workers pay between $9,000 to $12,000.) The government decision to launch the plan was taken after a petition to the High Court of Justice filed by Attorney Yuval Livnat from the Kav LaOved (Workers’ Hotline) organization.

However, agricultural groups cried out, as many of them share in the illegal funds, and when the farmers’ lobby raises its voice, no convention or law can stand in its way. The government decision was frozen on the basis of various pretexts.

Meanwhile, Israeli workers are also being charged for the right to work, despite the universal ban. This is done in a hidden and sophisticated manner, under the auspices and with the cooperation of the Israeli government.

The 200 Chinese workers in the Caribbean exposed the ongoing scam of greedy companies and a corrupt government. Had it not been for the current financial crisis, the workers would reconcile themselves to the fees they have already paid and continue to work.

In Chinese, crisis also means opportunity. Perhaps this is our opportunity to understand something and change it.

Hanna Zohar directs the Kav LaOved (Workers’ Hotline) non-profit organization

Guantanamo release angers Bush

Taken from Al-Jazeera News Agency, Wednesday, October 08, 2008

A US judge has ordered the release of 17 Chinese Muslim detainees from the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in what has been seen as a rebuke to the Bush administration.

US district judge Ricardo Urbina said there was no evidence the men were a security risk and that the US constitution prohibits indefinite detention without cause.

Local Uighur residents and human rights activists cheered as he told a Washington courtroom the men, who have been in custody for almost seven years, should be freed.

The ruling is the first court-ordered release of Guantanamo detainees since the facility opened in 2002.

The Bush administration reacted with anger to the ruling, with a spokesman for the department of justice saying it presented "serious national security and separation of powers concerns and raises unprecedented legal issues".

The department said it would file an emergency request on Tuesday evening for a stay with the US court of appeals in Washington to halt the ruling.

If it loses, it has the option of appealing to the US Supreme Court, the highest in the country.

Lawyers 'thrilled'
Lawyers representing the men said they were "thrilled" with the decision.

"Justice has too long been delayed but today we saw a great judge give a principled and just decision," Sabin Willett, a lawyer for some of the men, told Reuters news agency.

The Uighurs, from the Xinjiang province in western China, had been living in a camp in Afghanistan during the US-led bombing campaign in the country that began in October 2001 after the September 11 attacks in the US.

They fled into the mountains and were detained by Pakistani authorities, who handed them over to the US.

The men have been cleared for release from Guantanamo since 2004 as they are no longer considered "enemy combatants", the official designation for those held in Guantanamo Bay, and would have been sent home.

However, the US has not been able to find a country willing to accept them.

Many Muslim Uighurs seek greater autonomy for the region and some want independence, however China has waged a relentless campaign against what it calls their violent separatist activities.

About 265 detainees are still held at Guantanamo, which was opened in 2002 to hold suspects captured during the US's so-called "war on terror" launched after the September 11 attacks.

Most have been held for years without being charged and some allege they have been abused or tortured.

Chinese Couple Sue Yahoo! In US Over Torture Case

Taken from The Independent, UK, 20 April 2007
By Clifford Coonan

In a brave legal action against the great firewall of China, a jailed political prisoner and his wife have sued Yahoo! in a US court, accusing the internet firm of contributing to torture by helping authorities identify dissidents who were later beaten and imprisoned.

Wang Xiaoningwas imprisoned in September 2003 for 10 years for the crime of "incitement to subvert state power" after he emailed electronic journals calling for democratic reform and an end to single-party rule in a Yahoo! group in 2000 and 2001.

He was arrested by Chinese police in September 2002 and claims he was kicked and beaten during his detention.

Mr Wang and his wife Yu Ling claim the Hong Kong unit of Yahoo! provided mainland police with information linking Mr Wang to the postings, a claim that Yahoo! denies.

An engineer by profession, Mr Wang hails from Shenyang in China's industrial north-east, and he once famously described the Communist Party as "outwardly democratic but inwardly despotic" in one of his essays. Ms Yu, who lives in China still, is putting herself at risk by putting her name to the lawsuit.

The couple made their claim under US laws, which allow lawsuits from abroad to protect people against torture, and it is the first time anyone has used the legislation against an internet company for its activities in China.

The lawsuit was filed with help from the Washington-based World Organisation for Human Rights USA. In a vivid illustration of how internet censorship in China works with complicity from the big international web companies, I was unable to open the organisation's website using Google as it is blocked by the authorities.

The plaintiffs are seeking damages and an injunction to stop Yahoo! identifying political dissidents to Chinese police.

"While in custody, plaintiffs were subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, including arbitrary, prolonged and indefinite detention, for expressing their free speech rights and for using the internet to communicate about democracy and human rights matters," ran the text of their law case, filed with a district court in northern California.

This lawsuit names Yahoo!, its Hong Kong subsidiary and Alibaba.com, China's largest e-commerce firm, as defendants. The California-based Yahoo! bought a 40 per cent stake in Alibaba in a £500m deal in 2005.

China has 134 million internet users and is the world's second largest market, making it extremely attractive to the major web companies.

Google famously bowed down to the demands of the Chinese net nanny by allowing political censorship of its search engine.

Domestic internet giants such as Sohu and Baidu, along with China sites operated by Yahoo! and Microsoft, all routinely block searches on politically sensitive terms.

Blogs are regularly shut down, there are tens of thousands of net police monitoring the internet and searches are routinely blocked.

In 2005, Yahoo! was accused of supplying data that was used to jail for 10 years Shi Tao, a business journalist in Hunan province, for leaking state secrets to an overseas pro-democracy site apparently by using his Yahoo! email account.

Yahoo! sticks to its line that anyone doing business in China is forced to obey Chinese law, but human rights groups link it to a number of cases, including the case of Shi Tao, and the negative publicity has not helped Yahoo!'s image.

The human rights group Amnesty accuses Yahoo!, as well as Microsoft and Google, of facilitating or colluding in China's censorship of the net. Amnesty rejects the argument that the companies are "bringing the internet to China" , saying they are merely interested in getting into the market.