6-year-old girl found a request for help from China on a Christmas card
'23.12.2019'
Source: Medusa
British retailer Tesco has suspended cooperation with a Chinese factory after a London girl found a message on a Christmas card that the factory uses forced prison labor, writes “Medusa".
Six-year-old Florence Widdick signed a pack of postcards for school friends bought at a Tesco supermarket for £ 1,50 (about $ 2). On one of the postcards, the girl noticed the inscription “We are foreign prisoners from Qingpu Prison [District] in Shanghai. We are forced to work against our will. Please help us and inform the human rights organization. ”
The note also requested contact with the British journalist Peter Humphrey, who was in the same prison a few years ago. The Briton was there in 2013 on charges of illegally selling personal data of Chinese citizens (he denied guilt) and was released in 2015.
Florence Widdick, by her admission, was shocked by the note, and she showed it to her father. He first reacted with disbelief.
“I decided it was some kind of joke. But, thinking, I realized that this can be quite serious. I realized that it was necessary to convey the message to Peter Humphrey, as the author requested, ”said Ben Widdickomme to the BBC.
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Humphrey spent nine months from his two-year sentence in a Shanghai prison, from where they sent the note. The journalist said that he suspects who could write the message, but did not give the name of this person for security reasons.
“Everyone I met there was deprived of their liberty on very dubious grounds,” Humphrey emphasized.
According to the journalist, at the time of his imprisonment, prisoners worked at will, for example, to make money on soap or toothpaste. But, when Ben Widdycombe passed the message to him, Humphrey contacted his sources, and they confirmed that in recent years, prisoners were forced to work. After that, the journalist wrote about this story in The Sunday Times.
Tesco said it was shocked by suspicions about its supplier. The trading network noted that a control system has been introduced in it, which makes sure that partners do not use forced labor. The Zheijiang Yunguang Printing factory in question was successfully tested a month ago, Tesco said. Now the company will be checked again, and if the suspicions are confirmed, Tesco will refuse to cooperate with him.
