Jinjiang Group, a contractor for Chinese electric car maker BYD, said the company was hurt by the Brazilian Labour Ministry’s description of employees as “slaves” and that it was untrue.
Earlier, Brazil’s labour regulator said it found hundreds of Chinese nationals working in “slave-like conditions” at a BYD-owned factory construction site in the Brazilian state of Bahia. BYD said it has severed ties with the firm that hired the workers and is co-operating with authorities. Jinjiang said on its official Weibo account:
“The unfair stigmatisation of “slaves” has made our employees feel that their dignity has been insulted and their human rights have been violated, seriously hurting the dignity of the Chinese people. We have signed a joint letter to express our true feelings.”
Their statement was reposted by Li Yunfei, general manager of branding and public relations at BYD. He accused “foreign forces” and some Chinese media of “deliberately denigrating Chinese brands and the country and undermining China-Brazil relations.”
Jinjiang said translation difficulties and cultural differences led to the situation, and that the Brazilian inspectors’ questions were “leading.” The company also published a video in which a group of Chinese workers stand in front of the camera and one of them reads out a letter that Jinjiang said the workers signed together.
The letter said, for example, that 107 workers had handed over their passports to the company to help them apply for a temporary identity card in Brazil. Brazilian labour inspectors said the company had confiscated the workers’ passports. An unidentified Chinese man said:
“We are very happy to come to Camacari to work. We have complied with laws and regulations by working hard during this period, hoping that the construction of Brazil’s largest new energy vehicle project will be completed as soon as possible.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning said the Chinese embassy in Brazil is liaising with Brazilian counterparts to verify the situation and resolve it.
