Police said that the Chinese executives opened fire on workers protesting against poor pay and conditions at the Collum coal mine in the southern Sinazongwe province of Zambia on Friday.
Eleven people were admitted to hospital with wounds to the stomachs, hands and legs, and two are understood to remain in a critical condition. A Foreign Ministry official in Beijing said that the shooting was a "mistake" ...
Xiao Li Shan, 48, and Wu Jiu Hua, 46, both supervisors at the Collum Coal Mine, appeared briefly in court yesterday charged with attempted murder and were remanded in custody.
Not quite the Ludlow Massacre, from those far-off days when the US was violent and the UK peaceful, but not nice. To be fair to the managers, when rocks were thrown at them they probably thought 'what would they do in China?' - then did it.
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Not entirely unexpected. Assorted Spokes-Africans have been busily spinning Chinese involvement in Africa as some sort of meeting of equals, so unlike those damned superior colonialist Europeans.
And of course their local kleptocracies have been well happy with the "no strings attached" bungs, so unlike the moralizing attitudes adopted, if only superficially, by the post-colonial West.
In reality the Chinese are both entirely cynical and deeply racist. And while they regard us gwei lo as inferior, they see Africans as subhuman. I expect the arrested Chinese managers are genuinely wondering what all the fuss is about.
Old European proverb say, he who treat with a Chinaman should use a damned long scruting pole.
But why did the managers have to do anything?
No security?
The local police are not kept friendly?
Anyway I hope you note that racism is working rather well for quite a few groups.
Incidentally, I wonder what Andy Newman will have to say about this. Probably nothing unless he can think of a way of blaming it on the British legacy.
In all possible fairness, it's not like they could call an industrial meeting, with representatives from trade unions, the government, the management, the local community and other stakeholders in Zambia, could they? Do they even have any of those?
Wikipedia is predictably droll on the Ludlow Massacre. "In response, the miners armed themselves ..": yeah, yeah.
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