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Chinese media demanded official resignations and repentance on Monday amid popular outrage over the virtual enslavement of workers in scorching brick kilns that reports said had operated with government complicity.

Hundreds of farmers, teenagers and even some children were trapped or cheated into gruelling work in kilns, mines and foundries across Shanxi province in north China and neighbouring Henan province. Nearly 600 have been freed so far, reports said.

The workers endured prison-like confinement with fierce dogs and beatings, local media reported. One supervisor accidentally killed a child with a shovel and hid the body at night. Released workers were shown on television with festering wounds and emaciated bodies.

The scandal has emboldened local media to bluntly demand answers from the Communist Party and to demand that official heads roll.

"Who'll assume responsibility for this crime that has lasted for over a decade?" asked the Southern Metropolis Daily, a popular tabloid.

Local officials now parading as liberators of trapped workers had long turned a blind eye to the human trade, it said.

Power Vacuum

The scandal has stained the Communist Party's promises to build a "harmonious" society with better rights and income for hundreds of millions of poor farmers.

A senior official in the Party-run All China Federation of Trade Unions told a news conference on Monday that he was "outraged and shocked."

"It's absolutely impermissible for this sort of thing to happen in our socialist country," union official Zhang Mingqi said, according to a transcript of the news conference on the government Web site (www.gov.cn).

Police have detained 168 people accused of involvement in the exploitation. The government has sent a team to investigate the abuses and given freed workers 1,000 yuan ($130) each as "sympathy" money, the Beijing News said.

But many reports have dwelt on local government complicity in the abuses. One of the kiln owners detained, Wang Bingbing, was the son of the village Party secretary. And critics say the trade could not have survived without official collusion.

"The dereliction of local government departments and even collusion between officials and criminals is plain to see," said one local newspaper commentary reproduced on the Web site of the People's Daily (www.people.com.cn).

The People's Daily itself said the scandal called for "thorough reflection".

"Otherwise, we will have no way of facing up to the word 'harmony'," it said in a commentary.

The exploitation highlighted the disintegration of local government in the countryside, said some.

"The state's control over the countryside and farmers has weakened," said the Guangzhou Daily. "In some towns and villages a power vacuum has emerged and criminal forces have seized the opportunity to flourish and dominate."

($1=7.624 Yuan)