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Article

14 Jun 2013

Author:
New York Times, Andrew Jacobs

Behind Cry for Help From China Labor Camp

The cry for help, a neatly folded letter stuffed inside a package of Halloween decorations sold at Kmart, travelled…from China into the hands of a mother of two in Oregon…the writer said he was imprisoned at a labor camp…[A] 47-year-old former inmate at the Masanjia camp said he was the letter’s author. The man…[an] adherent of Falun Gong…said it was one of 20 such letters he secretly…stashed…inside products whose English-language packaging…[M]ore than a dozen people who were imprisoned at Masanjia and other camps…described a catalog of horrific abuse, including frequent beatings, days of sleep deprivation and prisoners chained up in painful positions for weeks on end. Several former inmates recounted the death of a fellow inmate, either from suicide or an illness that went untreated by prison officials…Sears Holdings, the owner of Kmart…said an internal investigation prompted by the discovery of the letter uncovered no violations of company rules that bar the use of forced labor. He declined to provide the name of the Chinese factory that produced the item…