iPhone Chinese partner Foxconn "Suicide Cluster" claims another victim
SOURCE
May 16, 2010
The Foxconn suicide mess has gotten even messier, with another reported death and 30 suicide attempts in the past three weeks alone.
The latest death was a 21-year-old man who reportedly fell from the seventh-story window of one of Foxconn's many worker dormitories in Shenzhen, China. He had sustained several knife cuts and a "dagger" was found at the scene. The death has not yet been ruled a suicide, even though the circumstances (jumping from a dormitory) mimic those we've seen with Foxconn suicides in the past.
We recently broke down the Foxconn suicide numbers, and at the time the stats were in line or even below China's overall suicide rate, but the revelation that 30 people have attempted suicide in the past three weeks is perhaps indicative of a much larger, much more troubling phenomenon.
Telegraph columnist Malcolm Moore, who's been chronicling the suicides in-country for some time now, has labeled this a "suicide cluster," wherein "the notion of suicide spreads rapidly through a group of people, often teenagers or young adults." It just so happens that nine of the Foxconn workers who killed themselves by leaping from their dorms earlier this year were all 25-years-old or younger and had been working at Foxconn for less than six months.
Foxconn is reportedly at a loss as to how and stop the "suicide cluster" from spreading further. The desperate company has even brought in a Buddhist monk to try and rid the factories of "evil spirits."
UPDATE
Monks to Release Foxconn Suicide Souls From Purgatory
SOURCE
May 18, 2010
Foxconn—one of Apple's main providers—is so worried about employee suicidal rate that they've hired 100 counsellors to help. Their concern isn't only about the living, however: They're bringing 30 Buddhist monks to release the suicide souls from purgatory.
Imagine that: 30 Buddhist monks performing a religious ceremony to free the souls of those who killed themselves. That's what Liu Kun—director of Foxconn's press office—said to the China Daily:
"The victims' families asked us to bless the dead and release their souls from suffering, and we will do everything we can to comfort them and prevent such accidents in the future."
According to Fan Fumin, a Chinese psychology expert at Tsinghua University, the number of suicides is comparable to those among college students. The problem, according to him, is that the suicidal behavior seems to be copied by other workers and increasing every month. He also said that this move comes too late.
Perhaps Foxconn needs to start preventing suicides by
easing their interrogation methods and the
pressure in their factories.
ALSO
Chinese Cartoonist Responds to Foxconn Suicides
SOURCE
Just like most topics which receive a great deal of international media attention, the Foxconn suicides were bound to get a response from people geographically closer to the incident. This is a Chinese cartoonist's take on the tragedies.
Translation:
This comic shows the high building of Foxconn with a signboard put on top saying "Suicide is Forbidden, Suicide is harmful to health". And the man (representing Foxconn) pointing at the signboard says "We have tried our best", and the man with white costume says "I think is a problem of feng shui ". So, Foxconn needs to be oriented.
Finally, just so this doesn't appear to be a bit of Chinese bashing, let me add two things. 1) Foxconn recently
admitted to breaking Chinese labor laws. CHINESE labor laws! 2) Workers at a Foxconn factory in Mexico
burned the place down over a weekend in February to protest forced overtime.
As for Apple, are they blameless in this? No, of course not. They know exactly what kind of people they're dealing with. Remember that Chinese labor law story linked above? Apple sent a team to investigate Foxconn before the manufacturer admitted to wrongdoings, yet found nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, you could come to the conclusion that having an insanely locked-down company do your manufacturing is the situation Apple prefers, so they can use fear and intimidation tactics to maintain their culture of secrecy.