Johannesburg – A court in Johannesburg sentenced seven Chinese nationals to 20 years in prison on Wednesday, each for trafficking in Malawi and forcing them to work in a factory in South Africa.
The organization was sentenced to trafficking 91 undocumented Malawi nationals on February 25, working at a cotton fabric factory in Deep, an industrial area in southern Johannesburg from 2017 to 2019.
The Chinese national was arrested on November 12, 2019, when police raided the factory and found that the Malawians were confined to control their movements under inhuman conditions. The factory has a high wall and razor.
Court records list the defendants as Shu-Uei Tsao, 42; Biao MA, 50; Hui Chen, 50; Quin Li, 56; Zhou Jiaquing, 46; Junying Dai, 58; Zhilian Zhang, 51. They were both convicted of human trafficking and violation of the country’s labor and immigration laws and were sentenced to 20 years in the Southern Gauteng Court.
Prosecutors seek life imprisonment. They said the victims were forced to do 11 hours of work seven days a week without proper training or safety equipment.
Prosecutors said many people had previously owned factories in China in Malawi and were recruited to South Africa to go to South Africa with false excuses.
During the trial, the victims described harsh conditions, including transporting them to the factory in windowless trucks, and they were not allowed to leave.
They were also forced to work on holidays and were banned from eating out of the way. They said their personal communications were prohibited and allowed to operate defective machines without protective equipment, resulting in accidents.
