--FILE--Customers enter or leave a supermarket of Wal-Mart in Shenzhen city, south Chinas Guangdong province, 17 September 2014. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sent a chilling message to whistle-blowers by firing four Chinese staff who accused it of food-safety violations, and authorities should intervene, a state-media commentary said. °Relevant authorities need to step in quickly, and not let such suspected acts of revenge be carried out with impunity, ± Xinhua reporter Zhang Chen said in a four-sentence post to the official Xinhua News Agency¯s microblog. Xinhua reported yesterday the workers in the southern city of Shenzhen were fired about a month after they accused the Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart of preparing food for sale with expired meat. °Associates were terminated for performance issues and for deviation from company policy, ± Wal-Mart China spokeswoman Vivian Jiang said in an e-mail today, adding that the retailer as well as the government had investigated the workers¯ claims and didn¯t discover any wrongdoing.
