The organizer of the less-than-one-year-old Takeaway Riders Union, Xiong Yan, and a number of his friends were arrested by Beijing police for reasons unknown to date, while reports of his arrest have been heavily deleted by officials over the past few days. Some labor activists believe that the arrest of the organizers is another example of the official crackdown on civil society groups, as the large number of take-out riders who have organized to defend their rights has caused official unease.
Mr. Zhang, a left-wing labor activist, told this reporter on Monday (March 1) that Xiong Yan, the leader of a coalition of more than a dozen WeChat groups of delivery riders, and a number of close friends had been arrested by Beijing police. There is no way to contact his Family and no further information is available.
According to Xiong Yan’s Weibo account, his last tweet was posted last Wednesday (Feb. 24) and has not been updated since then. And several media reports on him from late last year that he had retweeted have been covered up.
Mr. Zhang said: Yesterday they gave me the news that three people were taken away, and they were taken away on Thursday night (25th). Then on Saturday (27th), another person was interviewed, asking them about this too. That person was interviewed and was released within 24 hours. However, last night there was information that more than a dozen people were taken away. It is possible to take away in the name of provocation and nuisance. The person who was interviewed, was questioned about the content, is the knight alliance alliance of his videos or something like that. The actual fact is that you can find a lot of people who have been in the business for a long Time.
A delivery rider who claims to know about the Xiong Yan incident revealed that Xiong Yan had revealed last Wednesday that he might be in trouble and reminded everyone that if he hadn’t heard by Thursday afternoon, it meant he might have been in trouble.
He believes that Xiong Yan may have been arrested for repeatedly leading his peers to defend their rights, and before he reported the industry platform “hungry” suspected fraud rider bounty. This has attracted widespread attention, which may also make the official push for preventive measures uncomfortable.
Xiong Yan in the second half of last year to organize take-away riders alliance, because of the mobility of practitioners, we only vaguely know Xiong Yan from Guizhou, about 30 years old. He has been in Beijing for more than 10 years, but there is no more information about him.
Mr. Liu, who has been following the labor movement for a long time, pointed out that take-out riders are not only squeezed by the platform, but also made to work hard and even humiliated by customers, which is hard to describe. But when someone steps up to organize the industry, even loosely, it leads to official scorn and a swift move to suppress it.
Mr. Liu said: as this type of worker of theirs, the first thing is that the problem they face is already quite serious. Relying on individual resistance, there is no way out. This is now a consensus. Although he is a self-proclaimed ally, to be able to put this idea ah, he put into action. You are in Beijing, you have so hit the tandem ability, he this state, is the main reason why people are more afraid. When you do not have the power to pose a threat to them, they do not care about you, but when you, with this influence, with this power, then the authorities certainly want to nip him in the bud.
In this regard, our reporter called the Beijing Chaoyang District Public Security Bureau, which is said to be the agency handling the case, but the single agency refused to respond to the matter.
Delivery riders are a common means of livelihood for China’s underclass, with more than 6 million people in the workforce so far. But it is also daunting because of its high risk of being squeezed by platforms and severe customer discrimination. According to information released three years ago by traffic police departments in Shanghai and Chengdu, on average, one takeaway rider is killed or injured in a car accident every two days. But so far, it has been difficult for workers in the industry to successfully defend their rights once they have been injured.
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