Fear is running high as a Northern Ireland shopper found a letter from a Chinese insurgent in a pair of slacks she bought from a Primark store. Guilty fingers are pointing at Primark, but the company stands firm that there is no evidence they purchased clothing from a slave labor camp.
According to The Guardian, the distress note read:
“SOS! SOS! SOS! We are prisoners in the Xiang Nan prison of the Hubei province in China. Our job inside the prison is to produce fashion clothes for export. We work 15 hours per day, and the food we eat wouldn’t even be given to dogs or pigs. We work as hard as oxen in the field. We call on the international community to condemn the Chinese government for the violation of our human rights!”
Amnesty International’s Northern Ireland program is doing everything in its power to effectively solve the investigation. Primark has been compliant with the inquiry thus far, but it remains somewhat skeptical of the case. CNN reported that a spokesperson for Primark announced the last line of those particular trousers has not been sold since Oct. 2009.
“We find it very strange that this … has come to light so recently, given that the trousers were on sale four years ago,” the spokesperson said.
Karen Wisínska, the shopper who found the note, claims she purchased the slacks in June 2011, but she just recently found the letter while retrieving an item from a cabinet at her house.
“I am only sorry that I did not discover the note when I first purchased the clothing – then I could have brought this scandal to light much earlier,” Wisínska told The Guardian.
There have not been any further discoveries in the investigation, but Primark understands the seriousness of the claim and is examining the supply chain in further detail.
via bbcimg.co.uk
Photo: A section from the note © Amnesty International
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