http://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/2000/Apr/21/international/APPENDIX21.htm The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 21, 2000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Chinese fishermen forced to have appendectomies Employment agencies said surgery warded off illness at sea. They are accused of gaining financially. By Michael Dorgan KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS CHENGDU, China - A tall, thin man named Zeng Quanfu, 29, showed up here recently with a small scar on his abdomen and a story of missing appendixes. Maybe 200,000 missing appendixes. As Zeng tells it, he signed on in mid-1997 for a three-year stint as a cook on a Taiwan fishing boat. He had gotten his job through the Sichuan Overseas Labor Developing Co., a provincial government employment agency. The agency promised him $50 a month, a month's annual vacation, and an additional $130 for each month he worked, Zeng said. Zeng said he did not get most of the promised money. And he lost his appendix. The employment agency required Zeng and other prospective deckhands to have their appendixes cut out as a preventive measure against medical emergencies at sea - a claim the government employment agencies do not dispute - even though fishermen on the same boats from other countries were not required to have the surgery. Zeng said he learned the appendectomies were ordered, not by the Taiwan fishing companies, but by Chinese employment agencies paid $100 a year per worker by the fishing companies for health insurance. Adding insult to potential injury, the men from Sichuan had to pay the agency about $50 each for the surgery, even though the hospitals charged only about $44, he said. Eager to escape a province where per capita income is about $200 a year, Zeng went to sea, spending most of a year off the coast of Uruguay. After Zeng's story was posted on an Internet Web site by a human-rights activist, a number of mainland and Hong Kong newspapers picked up the story. One, the Yangcheng Evening News in the southern city of Guangzhou, reported in February that it had been shown a government document confirming that more than 200,000 men from 10 mainland provinces had been required to have preventive appendectomies before being placed on Taiwan fishing boats by government-run employment agencies. Li Hong, manager of the Sichuan Overseas Labor Developing Co., complained in a telephone interview that the news reports critical of his agency had been inaccurate. "They said we kept most of the fishermen's salaries," he said. "Can they show us the evidence for it? They just heard it, no evidence at all." As for the appendectomies, he confirmed that they were required but denied they were done so the agency could pocket the insurance money. He acknowledged that appendectomies were not required of fishermen from other countries, and said he believed the Chinese were more susceptible to appendicitis at sea. "As the laborers we sent are not from the coastal areas, they are not familiar with the sea and are different from those who grow up in the coastal areas," he said. "Fishermen from the Philippines did not have the operation because they are used to working on a boat." Li said the controversy was a big fuss over a minor matter. "It's just a small operation," he said. "It has little influence on the human body, yet it will protect fishermen's lives from death once they work in deep water." Several U.S. doctors, however, said the removal of symptom-free appendixes is a strange and dangerous practice. "You just don't open people's abdomens for any kind of preventive procedures," said Jay Everhart, a clinical epidemiologist at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Md. "The risks of a knife in the colon or postoperative problems so far outweigh any possible gain that it's unthinkable." Many Chinese also were shocked by the forced appendectomies, and government-run employment agencies were deeply embarrassed. After an investigation, the human-rights Web site that disclosed the practice was closed last month because it allegedly lacked proper registration. The Web site's operator, Huang Qi, says the exploitation of peasant fishermen exemplifies the rampant human-rights abuses and lack of institutional remedies in today's China. "It was never my aim to get involved in political things," Huang said. "When I opened this company to find people, I just wanted to help. But I found so many problems, so many people suffering, that I started to pay attention to political things." Undaunted, Huang said he and a handful of helpers soon would open another Web site, this one at the address www.june-4.net The address recalls a sensitive date in China, the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre of democracy advocates. Huang is not naive about where his human-rights activism will lead. "I know my future if I continue with my Web sites," he said. "It's either to jail or to hell." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Michael Dorgan's e-mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] © 2000 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. ================================ Robert F. Tatman [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jenkintown, PA, USA "Y Gwir Yn Erbyn y Byd"--Y Bardd Cymraeg "The Truth Against the World"--motto of the Welsh bards <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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