Police in Senegal arrested two Chinese nationals after a video of them assaulting a local employee went viral and sparked widespread outrage across the West African country.
The worker was a trucker for a Chinese-owned cement company. When the windshield on his truck cracked, the Chinese employers suspended him for seven days without pay.
The employee felt this was unfair since he claims he wasn’t responsible for the damage and subsequently reported his case to the labor department, who promptly told him that his suspension was illegal.
He then returned to the cement factory to collect his unpaid wages, the two Chinese managers asked him to sign a form that would obligate him to pay for the damaged windshield — which the worker refused.
It was at that point then that the video recorded the two Chinese violently subduing the worker to get him to sign.
WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Videos of Chinese managers abusing local African employees used to be much more common but not as much today. In fact, this is the first one in a long time. Nonetheless, they quickly go viral, sparking mass outrage online.
These videos tap into painful historical traumas when foreign colonialists regularly abused Africans for centuries. What’s interesting about these videos is that the Chinese perpetrators seemed wholly unconcerned that they were being filmed, clearly unaware of the impact their actions would have on TikTok and other social media platforms.
SUGGESTED READING:
- Pulse Senegal: Revelations about the Senegalese manhandled by the Chinese by Mouhamadou Ba (in French)
- Senegalese Press Agency: Two Chinese and a Senegalese prosecuted for assault and battery, placed under arrest by Alioune Diouf (in French)
