Chinese citizens are imprisoned in South Africa for the abduction and forced labor of the Malawians

Seven Chinese citizens, who smuggled Malawi in South Africa and subjected them to forced labor, receive a 20-year prison deadline.

The four men and three women were found guilty of human trafficking and abducting this year by a South African court.

Their sentence came nearly six years after they were arrested, when local authorities attacked a factory in Johannesburg and found 91 Malawian citizens, 37 of them children working in horror conditions.

Traffic human is a major problem in South Africa, with the country being considered a “source, transit and destination”, according to the government.

The group – Kevin Tsao, Chen Hu, Qing, Jiaking Zhou, Ma Biao, Dai Juning and Gian Zhilian – were found guilty of 158 out of 160, for which they were charged.

These include helping illegal immigrants to remain in South Africa and violate the country’s labor laws, failing to register their operations and keep a report on their profits among others.

The factory raid came after the authorities received advice from a worker who managed to escape.

Later, employees were forced to work 11-hour shifts, seven days a week, without proper training or safety equipment.

They were also paid far below the minimum salary of South Africa of $ 1.64 ($ 1.22 pounds) an hour and had tilled their salaries if they wanted a vacation.

According to Labor Laws in South Africa, employees cannot work for more than nine hours a day and are usually entitled to a “weekly rest period of at least 36 consecutive hours”, which includes Sunday unless a different agreement is reached.

A man testifies that workers are not allowed to leave heavily guarded factory premises, even buying food, which he described as dirty and inappropriate for people.

According to authorities, the victims were smuggled in the country in shipping containers.

Mr. Cao has worked as a factory manager called Beautiful City, while his co-blame is the leaders, according to the local news site News24. The factory made internal cotton for blankets using recycled material.

The prosecutor’s office of South Africa welcomed the sentence, stating that it would help “strengthen our fight against human trafficking.”

“Traffic of people has become a scourge in our country. We have become a destination like South Africa for trafficking in human beings (for) various reasons, including our porous borders,” said spokesman Findy Mulnvin.

The Ministry of Labor, which was part of the 2019 attack, also welcomed the verdict, as he insisted on more cooperation between the government services in order to “eradicate all these issues”.