Chinese police free man kept locked up as factory slave for 18 years
Xie Shisheng, originally from Jiangxi province, found stammering, looking dazed and unkempt after years of confinement in Guangdong
Police in China have rescued a man reportedly kept prisoner for 18 years who was tortured into working as a slave in an underground workshop, mainland media reported.
Xie Shisheng, originally from eastern Jiangxi province, was found stammering, looking dazed and unkempt from years of confinement after he was freed by Guangdong police on Wednesday.
Police raided the workshop making quilts and pillows in the city’s Qingcheng district of Qingyuan after neighbours had complained about hearing “disturbances”, the Nanfang Daily reported.
One man living nearby was quoted by the newspaper saying that he heard a man’s screams every night.
Xie’s captors – a couple from his hometown in Jiangxi, who allegedly owned the workshop – had already fled the scene by the time police arrived, the newspaper said.
Xie said had been kept prisoner, tortured and forced to work as a slave since the age of 16, when he left Jiangxi to work for the couple at the business in Guangdong province.