Tesco probes charity Xmas cards ‘packed by China’s jail slaves’
Six-year-old girl discovers inmates’ plea
TESCO has launched an investigation after a six-year-old girl stumbled upon a charity Christmas card containing what appeared to be a message pleading for help from inmates at a Chinese prison.
When Florence Widdicombe opened a box of cards, she discovered one containing the message: ‘We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu Prison, China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization.’
The message, written in capital letters, asked the finder ‘to contact Mr Peter Humphrey’, the former journalist and corporate investigator who was detained at Qingpu prison between 2013 and 2015 while facing trumped-up charges that he had traded personal information.
Florence’s father, Ben Widdicombe, a civil servant from Mitcham, South-West London, followed the instruction – and writing in today’s Sunday Times, Mr Humphrey makes clear that even though there is no name or firm evidence of where or how the message was written, he believes it to be genuine.
‘The Christmas cry for help from a Shanghai prison has turned an embarrassing spotlight on Tesco’s relationship with its Chinese suppliers and their use of forced labour,’ he claims, adding that former inmates he knew while at Qingpu had confirmed [to him] that prisoners were being forced into mundane manual assembly or packaging tasks.
Last night, a Tesco spokeswoman said: ‘We would never allow prison labour in our supply chain.
‘We were shocked by these allegations and immediately halted production at the factory where these cards are produced and launched an investigation.
‘We have a comprehensive auditing system in place and this supplier was independently audited as recently as last month and no evidence was found to suggest they had broken our rule banning the use of prison labour. If evidence is found we will permanently de-list the supplier.’
China has an estimated prison population of more than 1.5 million, offering a huge potential pool of slave labour – and profit – for unscrupulous Chinese companies.
Children as young as six may have picked the hazelnuts used to make millions of Ferrero Rocher chocolates, campaigners from the Centre for Child Rights have claimed.
Ferrero, which also produces the popular spread Nutella, as well as Kinder and Thorntons chocolates, buys almost 50,000 tons of hazelnuts every year from Turkey – where child labour is widespread.
According to Turkish government records from 2012, 900,000 children were working in various sectors including farming.