· 6p Chinese workers had begun to organize LEE CHEUK YAN, a representative of a radical Christian workers' organization in Hong Kong, was in Tiananmen Square on the night of the massacre. He had brought a large sum of money collected for the students by the solidarity movement, which was confiscated by the police, and he was jailed for three days. Lee had close contacts in particular with activists trying to form an independent union movement in China. He described this activity in an interview given in the British colony to our special correspondent, Laurent Carasso.
they had about a hundred members. They had intended to do a tour of the factories to explain to the workers why they needed to organize, to educate themselves politically and to register officially and demand legal rights for the union. At the same time, they were very courageous. They said that if only one of them was left at the end of the fight, that person would keep the flag of the independent union flying.
• Did they have the time to organize in the factories?
They were mainly in Tiananmen, but they had support in several factories that they wanted to organize they wanted to organize.
It is very significant that two days before the massacre, the Beijing papers reported that 40 factories had denounced the Beijing Independent Workers' Union as illegal. If 40 factories took the union seriously, it is because it had sympathizers in at least 40. And one of these factories was very big, the Beijing steelworks, with 220,000 workers. This plant is as symbolic for the Chinese workers as the
Gdansk shipyards in Poland. I heard that the army surrounded the steelworks to keep the workers from coming to support the students. • It is clear that in the beginning the police went after the workers in particular.
It was announced that activists of the independent workers' unions were arrested in at least five cities, the main industrial cities. So, in a very short time the movement had spread to several cities. The [Beijing] activists told me that the workers had come from other cities to meet them. A national network was beginning to form. This demonstrates quite clearly the general discontent with the party and the desire of the workers to have organizations of their own. • What is the situation of workers in Hong Kong?
Hong Kong workers are the victims of an ultra-free-enterprise economy. We do not have social security or medical insurance. If there is any accident, the workers are on their own. Wages are very uncertain. A lot of working people, in particular industrial workers, are paid by the day or by the job. No work, no wages! If the level of activity drops off, workers are not paid.
Workers have no voice. The Hong Kong government is not elected. It is a council of representatives of different social and professional organizations. The unions have two seats on this council. That means that in Hong counci. That means that in Hono Kong, the working people do not even have the right to vote. So, when you criticize the lack of democracy in China, you have also to criticize the British government that denies elementary democratic rights to the working people here.