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Security officer suspended over iPhone engineer's death

Chinese probe

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Following yesterday's news that a Chinese engineer committed suicide after misplacing a 4G iPhone prototype, a security officer involved in the death has been suspended from his job, and his case has been turned over to Chinese authorities.

The engineer worked for Foxconn, which manufacturers iPhones on behalf of Apple, and word of the security officer's suspension arrived from Hon Hai Group, which owns 72 per cent of Foxconn.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Hon Hai Group released a statement that Foxconn did not "authorize any person or department to violate the law" in the case of 25-year-old Sun Danyong, whose suicide we reported Tuesday.

Sun leapt to his death from his 12th-floor apartment window a few days after he told his superiors that one of the 16 iPhone 4G prototypes which had been entrusted to him had gone missing. Both Foxconn and Apple have acknowledged Sun's suicide.

What happened between Sun's admission of the missing prototype and his suicide is in dispute. According to various sources, including China Radio International and VentureBeat, Sun was allegedly beaten during a search of his apartment by Foxconn security personnel. A few hours later, Sun committed suicide - an act that was videotaped by security cameras.

No admission of a search or beating has been made by Foxconn, but they have now suspended without pay a security official identified only by his surname, Gu. The case remains murky. ®

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Latest Comments

wat

@ James O'Shea - Did you read the whole wiki page you linked?

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Anonymous Coward

Relevant article

The following article is from someone who has actually worked with Foxconn and provides an interesting perspective:

http://foarp.blogspot.com/2009/07/trouble-in-foxconns-forbidden-city.html

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@take responsibility

Once upon a time there was a company called Curtis Mathes. They made electronics, including TVs. It was their proud boast that they were 'the most expensive TV in America... and worth it'. They built their stuff well, they built their stuff using local labor and not Asian sweatshops, they had four-year warranties which they honored without any fuss at all... and they went bust. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Mathes>.

People don't want quality. People don't care how the workers making the products are treated. People merely care about the price.

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