Rescue workers have virtually given up hope of saving 39 convicts toiling in a prison-run coal mine in southwestern China who are feared dead after the pit filled with water last week, officials said Monday.
``There is little hope that they are alive. They may have drowned immediately when water poured into the pit,'' an official from the Sichuan Security Supervision Bureau told Reuters.
The Qinglongzui mine, operated by a prison near Yibin in the southwestern province of Sichuan, was flooded suddenly on Friday, the official said.
The official Xinhua news agency said Friday rescuers were working round the clock to find the 39 miners trapped, but did not identify them as prisoners.
The Sichuan official said all 39 were ``convicted criminals'' and said efforts by rescue workers to pump the water out of the pit were hampered by their inability to find the source of the water still flowing into the mine.
China's law forbids forced labor, but it remains a serious problem in penal institutions and reform-through-labor sentences are meted out through judicial procedures, the State Department said in its 2000 human rights report on China.
China has a dismal coal mine safety record, with more than 5,300 people killed in accidents last year.
Xinhua also reported that an explosion in a small coal mine in Sichuan killed eight miners and trapped seven Sunday. Rescue workers were searching for the workers trapped in the Shilin coal mine in Guang'an county, it said -- BEIJING (Reuters)
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