Chinese Prisoner Leaves Plea for Help Inside Xmas Card

[Jormungandr]

I posted this on SB too (probably a mistake as I'll be called a Sinophobe or something instead of the thread being a discussion on it, but meh, I stopped caring months ago what people thought of me on there when a large portion of the user-base went full on screeching chimpanzee over 'evil Nazis' for not being Left-leaning, minimum).



A six year old girl found a message in her Christmas card from an alleged foreign Chinese prisoner being used as slave-labour, begging for help and for the recipient to call someone who was arrested and imprisoned for investigating a corrupt Chinese business person, with the aim of having that person raise the alarm, so-to-speak.

"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. Ft.com/Humphrey"

So, yeah. Holy shit, if true and not a hoax.

With all the shady shit the Chinese government and businesses like to pull as a standard, this wouldn't strike me as being out of character.

 

[Floridaman]

This isn‘t the first time this happened, they have also left messages in toys over the years, rather depressing actually.

 

[Jormungandr]

This isn‘t the first time this happened, they have also left messages in toys over the years, rather depressing actually.

Gamesguy posted some information on SB that made me doubt the validity of this, but my position remains as 'wouldn't be surprised if this were true' because of how goddamn barbaric and oppressive China can be and how it's happened before in the past.

He can be an arrogant prat at times, but he did raise some good points:

This has gotta be some of the lowest effort smearing I've ever seen. Let's dissect this "cry for help" step by step:

• The message was inside a Christmas card produced from a factory that was literally just independently audited last month and absolutely no sign of prison labor was found.
• The supposed prisoners who wrote this message are foreign prisoners held in a special prison for foreign nationals who all have access to their consulates. Why would they need to write a message on a christmas card when they can just talk to a consulate officer?
• The person written on the card who they ask to contact - Peter Humphrey is a known liar and a convicted criminal who has been spending an awful lot of time promoting book and doing international speaking engagements over his two year prison stint in China.
• Peter Humphrey literally confessed to his crimes(buying private info on Chinese citizens) and his trial had received massive international attention and scrutiny because it was part of a crack down on corruption. The pharmaceutical company involved was fined 300 million and after he was released and deported Humphrey literally admitted that he did indeed commit the crime he was accused of(but he claims he had no knowledge that the information he paid for was private and illegally obtained). Four years later Humphrey now claims the charges are bogus even though he confessed to the Chinese authorities and then confessed again to the British media after he was released.
• Peter Humphrey is a total random with no authority over anything, why would the prisoners be able to contact him but not their own consulates? How would they even know about him?
• Peter Humphrey claims to be in contact with "ex-prisoners" who says there was forced labor, yet when he was in that very same prison himself just four years ago, he never claimed there was any kind of prison labor.
• The Christmas card is bought from a British supermarket and Humphrey is Brit, total coincidence I'm sure.

Are we supposed to believe that China is so short of workers that it needs prison labor from a couple hundred foreign prisoners who are probably the most politically active segment of prisoners on the planet? Not only that, but China supposedly puts them to work in a factory that manufactures products for export for a foreign country?
I will laugh my ass off if Tesco manages to track down that Christmas card and finds out this dude went into a store and wrote the message himself.

On the other hand, I could still see China pulling it off because they can expediently get things, such as covertly moving around entire prison populations within a day and hiding their presence, done pretty much done within a short time-window.

Doing such shady shit is pretty common in their government.

Also, I'm genuinely surprised I wasn't called a Sinophobe directly or alluded to be one in-thread. Perhaps people have realized on some level that, yes, China are not Our friends.

 

[Floridaman]

this case may very well be fake, but there have been incidents of this happening. The thing is the labor camps are seperate and foreign prisoners usually wouldn’t wind up there, for obvious reasons. Also they officially abolished the labor camp system after one of these letters, although some have said that it does still exist just under a different name.

Masanjia re-education through labor camp - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Terthna]

Gamesguy posted some information on SB that made me doubt the validity of this, but my position remains as 'wouldn't be surprised if this were true' because of how goddamn barbaric and oppressive China can be and how it's happened before in the past.

He can be an arrogant prat at times, but he did raise some good points:

On the other hand, I could still see China pulling it off because they can expediently get things, such as covertly moving around entire prison populations within a day and hiding their presence, done pretty much done within a short time-window.

Doing such shady shit is pretty common in their government.

Also, I'm genuinely surprised I wasn't called a Sinophobe directly or alluded to be one in-thread. Perhaps people have realized on some level that, yes, China are not Our friends.

No offense, but if Gamesguy says something isn't true, my first instinct is to believe that it is; the man can be utterly dishonest when it suits him, and it wouldn't be the first time he's gone to bat for the Chinese government. He's one of those "China makes me money, and thus it can do no wrong" types.

He also likes to stalk and harass people he's had arguments with; so fuck that guy.