Chinese authorities have detained a dozen labour activists over recent days in the latest clampdown on efforts to organise workplaces in China, rights groups said. Beijing has taken an uncompromising line against efforts to establish independent labour unions in southern Guangdong province, the epicentre of China's high-tech manufacturing sector.
The campaign is backed by campus Marxist groups at some of China's most prestigious universities — several leaders of which have been arrested or disappeared in recent months.
Another seven students and recent graduates from two elite Beijing universities were arrested on Monday, according to labour rights organisation Jasic Workers Solidarity.
The students were rounded up hours after publishing a statement accusing police of recording forced video confessions of previously detained student activists who had supported the Guangdong union campaign, the rights group said.
They had accused police of organising recent screenings of the videos, in which their subjects confessed to using worker issues to "subvert the state", on several campuses in an effort to deter further student activism.The viewings targeted students who were members of Jasic Workers Solidarity — a group which rose to prominence last year when it attempted to form a workers' union at a welding machinery company in Guangdong.
