RECENTLY, in a very instructive development, a court in Rwanda handed down a 20-year sentence to a Chinese national for torturing local mineworkers after a video showing him flogging a man tied to a post went viral on social media. The video showed the foreign national flogging a victim huddled on the ground and tied to a pole, while a group of onlookers in orange jackets stood idly by. Sun Shujun, manager of a mine in the western part of Rwanda, was convicted along with an accomplice following his arrest last September. Another manager at the company named Ali Group Holding Ltd was equally given a 12-year sentence, while a third defendant was discharged and acquitted. Said Judge Jacques Kanyarukiga: “It is clear that (Sun) tortured the victims and issued corporal punishment with malicious intent, and this is a grave crime.”
According to reports, Sun admitted assaulting two workers, but sought an alibi in the fact that he had been “frustrated and fed up of them constantly stealing minerals.” He also pointed out that he had compensated the victims with more than a million Rwandan francs ($1,000) and signed a reconciliation letter. But the prosecution, which had accused him of assaulting four people, would have none of that argument. It contended that the victims had accepted the payments because they were traumatised and afraid of him. Naturally, the Chinese embassy in Rwanda issued a statement saying that it had taken note of the judgment and that it had always asked Chinese citizens in Rwanda to abide by local laws and regulations. It called for the case to be handled appropriately “in a rational, fair and just manner and for the legitimate rights of Chinese citizens to be properly protected.” In Nigeria, another Chinese citizen earned a two-year sentence recently for ripping up Naira notes in a fit of rage. A Federal Court in Lagos convicted the suspect, Li Lei Lei, of “mutilating the Nigerian currency” during an altercation with airport officials on his way out of the country in May. According to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Li pleaded guilty to four charges of breaking Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) legislation. He was however given an option of a N200,000 fine.
Foreign nationals treating Africans like dirt on their own continent is of course not a new thing. Across the continent, enabled by the glaring lack of African leadership, they have committed series of unspeakable atrocities against Africans over the years, making a total mess of the fight for independence from foreign rule and the subscription to democratic rule in Africa. Treating Africans like mere chattel, these foreigners, particularly those of Asian origin, pay them peanuts for hard labour, deny them well-deserved promotion, impose unqualified fellow foreigners on them and, worse still, subject them to physical torture whenever they dare to assert their constitutionally guaranteed rights. If the story of a foreign employer denying a Nigerian worker, a cook, of the opportunity to eat within her premises even as she (the cook) worked hard to feed the employer and her family for over a year sounds odd, it is precisely because the relationship between Blacks and people of other races has been persistently odd. Across Africa, expatriates deploying the power of money and oppressing Africans using their own security agencies, particularly the police, is not a new story.
In what must rank as one of the most horrendous acts of brutality against Nigerians on their own soil, about 120 factory workers were killed 20 years ago after a massive fire swept through a Taiwanese-owned spoon/bottled water factory in Odogunyan, Ikorodu, Lagos State. As the fire raged, the owners of the factory locked all exit points, estimating Nigerian life to be worth exactly nothing. And that’s precisely the point: if African leaders treat their own people like animals, that, precisely, is how others will continue to treat them. In Nigeria, it is a fact that the authorities habitually allow expatriates to get away with horrendous crimes against Nigerians. This is despite the fact that most of the human resource managers in the affected companies are Nigerians. They treat their fellow Nigerians shabbily. It is a fact that the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Ministry of Labour and Employment have not done their best to assist Nigerians in this regard. In any case, Nigerian workers are subjected to hell even in companies owned by Nigerians.
African leaders, often a deadly cast of provincial thieves, megalomaniacs and moral cripples, have sold the continent for cheap for years and many of them deserve a lifetime behind bars. A Nigerian proverb says that people will describe a calabash precisely how the owner describes it. The import of this proverb is self-respect and dignified treatment of family and friends. After all, as they say elsewhere, charity begins at home. It is clear that unless the African people rise up with unity of purpose and demand a change, the situation will remain the same. It is time to uphold labour laws and regulations without fear or favour. In this regard, we commend the Rwandan Ministry of Justice for prosecuting the case against Sun Shujun very diligently. That is the kind of action that inspires hope on the continent. By the way, this is not to say that we are fascinated by Paul Kagame’s often anti-democratic leadership style.
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