Foxconn Chairman Calls in Exorcist to End Suicides
As Foxconn's suicide cluster continues, the company is desperate to have the death toll remain where it is.
Foxconn has been experiencing a wave of suicides, with a total of eight employees taking their lives since the beginning of the year. A ninth incident, which took place yesterday, and saw a man with several knife wounds fall from a seventh-floor window of one of Foxconn’s dormitories, has not been confirmed as a suicide.
With so many people working for Foxconn (roughly 400,000 work at the Longhua plant alone), some have tried to explain away the suicides as statistically normal. However, the Telegraph newspaper cites Foxconn as saying it has prevented a further 30 suicide attempts in the last three weeks alone.
Though a weapon was found at the scene of the most recent incident, it seems many of the suicide victims have jumped from dormitories, leading to suspicions as to how the 21-year-old man died. Foxconn is said to be desperate to stop the suicide cluster from continuing and according to a DigiTimes report dated last week, Chinese media says chairman of the company Terry Guo has sought the aid of an exorcist to try and put an end to the tragedies.
While unusual, suicide clusters, when the notion of suicide spreads throughout a group of people, are not unheard of. In 2007/2008 there was a cluster of suicides in a town in Wales, which saw nearly 20 people ranging from the age of 15 to 26 commit suicide. Most of them hung themselves and all of them had a connection to at least one of the others. At the time, media speculated as to whether or not social networking sites had played a role in the cluster. Many wondered if memorial pages set up on Bebo and Facebook had romanticized the idea of suicide and led others to follow in the footsteps of the first victim, 18-year-old Dale Crole.
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how about a pay raise?
Underpaid exploited Chinese workers forced to work excessively long hours for minimal pay are offing themselves? Get the Eff out of here....
Hmmm.. redundant much me? I hate the end of the day... My mind does wander...
lol, romanticize suicide? im pretty sure there's nothing you could do to 'persuade' me into committing suicide. try looking elsewhere, like the work place, or their actual lives. so stupid how everything is blamed on social networking these days.
Gotta love how utterly stupid some people are--can't help but laugh.
weird.
shouldn't they be lucky they even have jobs, especially in the tech field? I know a lot of people who don't have jobs and are trying to raise kids and they don't just go killing themselves and they are happy.
Maybe they think that there's a respawn, or that they'll come back as glittering vampires...
weird.shouldn't they be lucky they even have jobs, especially in the tech field? I know a lot of people who don't have jobs and are trying to raise kids and they don't just go killing themselves and they are happy.
The foxconn employees are paid horribly. have to stay on site and work 12+hrs days.
lol, romanticize suicide? im pretty sure there's nothing you could do to 'persuade' me into committing suicide. try looking elsewhere, like the work place, or their actual lives. so stupid how everything is blamed on social networking these days.
...or video games
I'm 50/50 believing these are all suicides in the light of the last guy, with what sounds like multiple stab wounds.
I'm sure somebody has a motive to be killing these guys, and throwing them from a balcony is a very easy way to do it.
Maybe they should look into working conditions and benefits for those 400,000 people before playing a silly game with a priest...
400,000 people in one factory, with the implication that they live in on-site dormitories. Well I suppose you'd have a rather large car park otherwise but dam. Imagine the logistics of simply organizing to feed, clothe, wash and bed such a large number of people.
Wonder if this is the same foxconn plant that is building the iPhone 4G...
With 400k employees...
"30 suicide attempts in the last three weeks alone"
10 suicide per week. at least 1 per day.
i suppose they cant live like ants anymore.
The suicide rate at foxconn is lower than the national average suicide rate in the USA at 7.5 per 100,000 vs 11 per 100,000.
doesn't have anything to do with a leaked 4G iPhone to a neighboring country..... multiple knife wounds and then jumps from the building, doesn't sound like suicide to me, i thought if you wanted to commit suicide then one good knife wound would probably do it, why inflict more? they dont need an exorcist they need bloody union
ya, if only we were willing to pay another buck for our electronics.
Now that people are hinting at it. It does make sense that the company is having people commit "voluntary suicide" until someone pointed a finger at the person who leaked the new iPhones. I have a pile of money on the person who was stabbed is the last of this "suicide cluster".
@rooketA suitably stupid comment from a suitably stupid user name. Yes, I'm sure they feel lucky to have to live in barracks that are worse than most of our prisons, to have to work 12+ hours a day for pennies on the dollar, and no vacation time. Just as I'm absolutely sure they have the opportunity to quit and find a job somewhere else if they don't like it.You should be eternally grateful that you have the 'right' to sit on your fat, ignorant ass and make ignorant-ass comments on the internet.
Actually, yes... Many of them are. I lived in China for 3 years, and jobs that the rest of the world would look upon with disgust and revulsion many of them are happy to have. All of them? No. Many of them? Yes.
Are you sure it is 400,000 workers? Not 4,000?
Me being a huge horror fan, as soon as I read this thought that it is eerily similar to "The Happening".
Thats just really sad thought.
Let's call in the scary babbling religion freak to fix our insanity problems! Woooooo!!!!!
Are you sure it is 400,000 workers? Not 4,000?
Indeed. It must be a typo.
Its not a typo and yes they live and eat there maybe its the stress of not leaving work environment.
there are more buildings behind this one hard to find a full view.
the place is HUGE its like a city.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiN1MtqEz7Y
They work 15-hour days but are paid just $50 a month — miserable even by China’s standards.
@Kelavarus - a quote from techguy911: "They work 15-hour days but are paid just $50 a month — miserable even by China’s standards."
I stand by my (admittedly trollish) comment. Being poor and destitute makes you happy to have a job (see medieval Europe), but it doesn't make the job good, or a crime against humanity, or generally despicable.
And I'm aware that their (reported) suicide rate is about on par with the rest of the country- many of their fellow citizens work in similar conditions.
I'm a big tech nerd and buy a lot of computer parts so I'm no one to point fingers, but I think we should be doing something about this sort of stuff- not excusing it.
This world falling apart at this point. It's really sad, seeing people slaved like that. I couldn't do it, I would learn a trade and leave that environment I really would.
stabbed and fell out a window? Jobs must have caught somebody stealing another Iphone prototype.
Hopefully they hired Billy Witch Doctor.
"Repeat the sacred chant! I Am Sofa King We Todd Did!"
According to its website, it has more than 600,000 workers. WOW.
You can read Yahoo translate here
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/transla [...] =Translate
The incidence of depression is hundreds of times higher in the worldwide population than anybody realizes.
Treat the depression and you'll stop a lot of suicides.
Dammit, I just read that article about Jobs vs Ryan Tate, and I had a big grin on my face. My grin is gone now. Thanks Toms...
Modern day slavery. But hey, my Foxconn Bloodrage only cost me $250 new!