Tesco suspends Chinese supplier after prisoner labor report

 

FILE PHOTO: A company logo is pictured outside a Tesco supermarket in Altrincham northern England, April 16, 2016. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo

 

LONDON (Reuters) - British supermarket giant Tesco suspended a Chinese supplier of Christmas cards on Sunday after a press report said a customer found a message written inside a card saying it had been packed by foreign prisoners who were victims of forced labor.

 

"We abhor the use of prison labor and would never allow it in our supply chain," a Tesco spokesman said on Sunday.

 

"We were shocked by these allegations and immediately suspended the factory where these cards are produced and launched an investigation. We have also withdrawn these cards from sale whilst we investigate."

 

Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, donates 300,000 pounds ($390,000) a year from the sale of the cards to the charities British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK.

 

The Sunday Times said the message inside the card read: "We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu Prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organization.

 

"Use the link to contact Mr Peter Humphrey."

 

Peter Humphrey is a British former journalist and corporate fraud investigator.

 

British supermarket giant Tesco suspended a Chinese supplier of Christmas cards on Sunday after a press report said a customer found a message written inside a card saying it had been packed by foreign prisoners who were victims of forced labour. Emer McCarthy reports.

 

Humphrey and his American wife Yu Yingzeng were both sentenced in China in 2014 for illegally obtaining private records of Chinese citizens and selling the information to clients including drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline. The couple were deported from China in June 2015 after their jail terms were reduced.

 

The message inside the card was found by a 6-year-old girl, Florence Widdicombe, in London. Her father Ben Widdicombe contacted Humphrey via the LinkedIn social network.

 

Florence Widdicombe said she was "shocked" to see the message in the card. "We opened them about a week ago and we were writing in them, and on about my sixth or eighth card, somebody had already written in it," she told BBC TV.

 

Her father said at first he thought the note was a prank, but he later released it was potentially a serious matter and he felt a responsibility to pass it on to Peter Humphrey as requested.

 

Writing in the Sunday Times, Humphrey said he did not know the identities or the nationalities of the prisoners who put the note into the card, but he "had no doubt they are Qingpu prisoners who knew me before my release in June 2015 from the suburban prison where I spent 23 months".

 

The cards were produced at the Zheijiang Yunguang Printing factory, which is about 100 km (60 miles) from Shanghai Qingpu prison, Tesco said.

The company, which prints cards and books for food and pharmaceutical companies, says on its website it supplies Tesco.

 

Two phone calls and one emailed request for comment to the company went unanswered after usual business hours on Sunday.

 

Tesco said it had a comprehensive auditing process in place.

 

"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 labor," the spokesman said. 

 

"If a supplier breaches these rules, we will immediately and permanently de-list them."

 

Humphrey and his wife said in their trial they had not thought they were doing anything illegal in their activities in China.

 

(Reporting by Paul Sandle in London and Yingzhi Yang and Yilei Sun in Beijing; Editing by Frances Kerry)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-12-23

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I bet they don't get a Christmas card from the author next year or even a happy new year this????

In my 3 year College days when 16/18 years old .. in the summer 7 week break I used to work in a factory packaging bird food (pet budgies etc) to fund my time studying.

 

Me and another chap regularly amused ourselves by putting notes in some packs saying "urgent .. help us .. we are being held captive in a bird seed factory".

 

Childish I know ..... 

 

We never heard of anyone rushing to help us.  

 

In the internet age of 24 hour drama and need for news .. its out there round the world immediately .. investigate later.

 

It maybe someone as childish as me ....

Edited December 23, 20196 yr by PAWNEESE

 

12 hours ago, webfact said:

"If a supplier breaches these rules, we will immediately and permanently de-list them."

Happy to hear that Tesco is against forced labour and is investigating the supplier.

18 minutes ago, PAWNEESE said:

In my 3 year College days when 16/18 years old .. in the summer 7 week break I used to work in a factory packaging bird food (pet budgies etc) to fund my time studying.

 

Me and another chap regularly amused ourselves by putting notes in some packs saying "urgent .. help us .. we are being held captive in a bird seed factory".

 

Childish I know ..... 

 

We never heard of anyone rushing to help us.  

 

In the internet age of 24 hour drama and need for news .. its out there round the world immediately .. investigate later.

 

It maybe someone as childish as me ....

I think. China has a bit of a track record on child labor.

 

Your story is not relevant.

11 minutes ago, Sujo said:

I think. China has a bit of a track record on child labor.

 

Your story is not relevant.

 China has very strict laws on child labour. Education is available to everyone up to their sixteenth year. Thereafter high school or vocational college to eighteen years.

 

What the parents choose to do out in the wilds is another matter, but factories, no.

 

Plus if they are foreign prisoners as the op states, their embassy must know and they would have regular consular visits, so it sounds like some sort of prank to me as the consul would protest any maltreatment without all this drama.

Edited December 23, 20196 yr by Traubert

Troll post removed.  

 

  13 hours ago, Sujo said:

"I think. China has a bit of a track record on child labor.

 

Your story is not relevant."

 

I know China has a track record ... I am sure its a true and horrendous story. There are many other sources .. according to CNN and others

 

But I felt the need to recount my youthful stupidity.  Your critic re my true story is not relevant.  

 

Melly Clistmas ????????????

 

 

Edited December 24, 20196 yr by PAWNEESE

What possible benefit could publicizing this have?
 

Wouit not make more sense to keep it secret, order more cards and investigate? 
 

Not buying cards punishes the workers too, not just the company.

I first read about this in the DM online , not exactly a paragon of truthful reporting. The comments section was overwhelmingly expressing disbelief and supporting prisoners being made to work instead of having a holiday.

I commented that I also believed this to be fake news and found my post on here removed a few hours later.

A striking similarity happened with the DM report, exactly the same article and pictures but comments had been “moderated “to only express outrage at inhuman conditions imposed by the Chinese, no dissenting comments.

It seems that the media believes that only they can be the judge of what we should believe.

On 12/24/2019 at 5:07 AM, Sujo said:

I think. China has a bit of a track record on child labor.

 

Your story is not relevant.

You should try reading a book Factory Girls from Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie Chang a former Wall Street journalist rather than believe every bit of western especially American induced garbage about China. 

This could be true and just as easily been a fake planted by supporters of Humphrey's Human rights org.

 

What we do know is there is a lot of human rights violations in China, but is making prisoners work to offset the cost of keeping them incarcerated wrong??? What may be wrong is why these people were locked up in the first place.

 

It was not that long ago that the British GPO (now Royal Mail) had their mail sacks stitched by prisoners, still happens in the states.

 

 

Further to my previous post about moderation of comments on the DM online where they removed disbelieving comments they have now reversed their stance and the majority is now allowed to say fake.

Maybe their moderators realised that in this case the majority rules, not PC Moderators with the power to remove posts they disagree with.

On 12/23/2019 at 10:57 PM, chickenslegs said:

 

Happy to hear that Tesco is against forced labour and is investigating the supplier.

Oh my God forced labour the horror of having to put cards in envelopes ,and to think they could have had a much easier time in prison breaking rocks or working in mines .

and i bet these poor souls had only done robberies and murders and such .