Christmas card carries message of forced labor in China

A little girl in London recently found an unlikely greeting scrawled in a store-bought box of Christmas cards, The Times of London reported on Sunday. Florence Widdicombe, 6, pulled out a card sold by British retailer Tesco to benefit U.K. charities with a message already written inside: “We are foreign prisoners in Shanghai Qingpu prison China. Forced to work against our will. Please help us and notify human rights organisation.” The message also referenced British journalist Peter Humphrey, who spent two years in Chinese prisons, including Qingpu. Widdicombe’s father contacted Humphrey, who wrote the report for The Times.

What did Tesco do? The retailer quickly pulled the cards off the shelves and halted production at Zhejiang Yunguang Printing in China. The printer on Monday denied it uses forced prison laborers, telling CNN, “We think someone is smearing us.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang on Monday said the prison does not force foreigners into such labor and accused Humphrey of making up the story. But the journalist wrote that the message in the card rang true and he had contacted an “informal network of ex-prisoners” who confirmed such conditions.

Dig deeper: Read June Cheng’s report from August on evidence that Chinese authorities are forcing prisoners of conscience into organ donation.