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In a move that surprises no one, Bloomberg is reporting (via China Daily) that Hon Hai Group, Foxconn’s parent company, suspended a security official they would only identify as “Gu” after an employee, Sun Danyong, killed himself due to a lost iPhone prototype.

Gu has supposedly been turned over to Chinese authorities but Hon Hai isn’t saying anything else except that they are “unaware of the reason behind” Sun’s suicide. Yeah right, unaware. Who knows, maybe he had marital problems or something.

In addition, both Apple and Hon Hai are falling back on the “Becket” defense, as they are explaining effectively that they didn’t ACTUALLY call for Sun’s blood.

“We are saddened by the tragic loss of this employee, said Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Cupertino, California-based Apple. “We require that our suppliers treat all workers with dignity and respect.”

Foxconn didn’t authorize any person or department to violate the law, according to the statement. Hon Hai said it offered condolences to Sun’s family.

So Apple tacitly blames their “supplier” Foxconn, and Foxconn blames an unauthorized person…meaning Gu I guess. How soon before they both explain it was all this “Gu”’s fault and he must have gone rogue, or some other such nonsense?

Do I think either Apple or Hon Hai told someone like Gu to lean on Sun and make him kill himself? No, of course not…but I do say the high stakes secrecy games they play with products led directly to his death, and both Apple and Hon Hai/Foxconn need to reexamine their priorities. Did they tell Sun directly that he deserved to die for losing track of an iPhone? I doubt it…but somehow he got that message. I wonder how?

Zealot (471 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).