six-year-old Florence Widdicombe from Tooting in south London was in the process of writing christmas cards to his friends from school, as she made a spooky discovery.
One of the cards had already been filled out with a handwritten message.
It will write to the BBC, The Guardian and South China Morning Post.
Shortly before had Florence Widdicombe and her parents bought the cards – which all had pictures of cats with christmas hats on – in supermarkedskæden Tesco.
Now suspect both the family and the supermarket, to the message, the little girl found in her christmas card, was a cry for help from fængselsarbejdere in Shanghai.
Florence Widdicombe felt with his own words shocked, when she discovered that someone had already filled her cats-christmas cards out. Photo: Ritzau Scanpix
In the message stood that, among other things, in capital letters, to fængselsarbejderne were ‘forced to work against their will’.
‘Please help us, and to notify the human rights organisation’, it sounded in the card in which the senders introduced themselves as ‘immigrant worker in the Shanghai Qingpu prison in China’.
According to the BBC says a spokesperson for Tesco, to supermarkedskæden is ‘shocked’, and that ‘we would never allow prison labour in our chain’. Therefore, they have now temporarily stopped cooperation with the supplier, chinese Zheijiang Yunguang Printing, and will completely boycott them, if it turns out that they use fængselsarbejdere in their production. So far, they have also tampered with the cards from the supplier of the shelves in the stores.
the Message in the card asked the recipient to take contact to Peter Humphrey – a british journalist, who himself has been imprisoned in the Shanghai Qingpu prison.
Photo: Ritzau Scanpix
the BBC has spoken with six-year-old Florence Widdicombe, which tells, that she had reached her ‘sixth or eighth’ christmas cards, when she opened the next and saw that someone had already written in it.
– It made me feel shocked, she says to the media.
Her father, Ben Widdicombe, adding that he initially thought there was talk about a kind of ‘prank’, when the daughter showed him the message.
Also, Florence’s father, Ben Widdicombe, was very shocked when he saw the message in the card. Photo: Ritzau Scanpix
– However, upon reflection it dawned on us that it might be something fairly serious. I was very shocked, but also felt a responsibility to pass it on to Peter Humphrey, for which the sender asked me.
– There are one or otherwise knows that the message reaches in christmas … it makes It really intense and very strong, says Ben Widdicombe.
– It could be finishing all the behalf. And we have many, many cards, as all families have, which are not being used, and which we put in a drawer and forget all about. There is a incredibly element of fate in all of this with the fact that the card was written, reached us, and we opened it on the way, as we did.
Ben Widdicombe wrote to the journalist Peter Humphrey on LinkedIn and got a response back that he had contacted former prisoners in the chinese prison. According to Peter Humphrey, who now has written the story for the Sunday Times, he got along the way confirmed that fængselsarbejdere are being forced to work.
