Florence Widdicombe, six, was writing Christmas cards to her school friends when she noticed that one in the box had already been filled in. The card showed a kitten in a Santa hat. Inside, in block capitals, a message read: “We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organisation.”
Florence, who lives in Tooting, south London, had been on her “sixth or eighth card” when she spotted it. “It made me feel shocked,” she said. Once the message was explained to her, she felt “sad”.
The Sunday Times broke the story. By Monday, the Chinese company that makes greeting cards for Tesco was denying everything.
The supplier says it is being smeared
Zhejiang Yunguang Printing told the Global Times, a nationalist Chinese newspaper, that it first heard of the matter when foreign journalists called. “We have never done such a thing,” a spokesman said. “Why did they include our company’s name?”
A representative who spoke to CNN by phone, and would not give a name or job title, went further. “We think someone is smearing us,” the representative said, adding that the firm has no labor from Qingpu prison and that reporters should “ask Qingpu prison what’s exactly going on.” The company said it was checking whether it had printed the cards at all. Factory manager Shu Yunjia told the BBC none of its work had been outsourced to the prison.
Tesco halts the factory
Tesco opened an on-site investigation on Friday, then suspended the site and told factory management over the weekend. A spokesman said the retailer had not placed any orders there since October and had more meetings lined up that week with the factory and the supplier. The cards were also pulled from sale during the inquiry.
“We abhor the use of prison labor and would never allow it in our supply chain,” a Tesco spokesperson said. The company added that the factory had been audited independently the month before, with no sign it had broken the ban on prison labor. It said it would drop Zhejiang Yunguang if prison labor turned out to be involved. No other customer had reported a message in a card.
The charity cards bring in £300,000 a year for the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK.
The man named in the note
The message told whoever found it to contact Peter Humphrey, a British former journalist. He was jailed in China from 2013 to 2015 on what he calls “bogus charges that were never heard in court”, and spent his last nine months in the same cell block at Qingpu that the note came from.
Florence’s family reached him over LinkedIn. Humphrey said he then spoke to former inmates who confirmed that prisoners were being made to work. One ex-prisoner now living in Britain told him that inmates had been packing Tesco Christmas cards and gift tags for at least two years. Humphrey said he had himself seen product tags from other high street brands while inside.
He told the BBC the foreign prisoners’ block holds about 250 people, 12 to a cell. In his time there, factory work was voluntary and paid for items like soap and toothpaste. Now, he said, it is compulsory. He believes the card was a group effort by former cellmates, though one person wrote it: “I think I know who it was, but I will never disclose that name.”
“When I saw [the message], I immediately knew it was absolutely genuine,” Humphrey told CNN.
Beijing calls it a farce
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters on Monday that the claim was “a farce” invented by Humphrey. “Shanghai’s Qingpu prison has no such foreign prisoners undergoing forced labour,” he said. Humphrey called the denial “predictable”. CNN said it had also contacted the Sunday Times and the Shanghai Prison Administration for comment.
The BBC noted that China’s Prison Law requires “criminals with working capacity” to take part in labour. Similar notes have surfaced before. In 2014, Karen Wisinska of County Fermanagh found a message in a pair of Primark trousers describing 15-hour working days and food “wouldn’t even be given to dogs or pigs.”
Sources
- Tesco Christmas card factory in China denies 'forced labour'
- Tesco’s Chinese Christmas card maker denies using forced prison labor | CNN Business
- Tesco Christmas card factory in China denies 'forced labour'
Sources
- Tesco Christmas card factory in China denies 'forced labour' – BBC
- Tesco charity Christmas cards: Chinese printing company denies…
