A New Zealand businessman who spent four and a half years in a Chinese prison has claimed that while incarcerated he was forced into slavery and tortured in order to make consumers goods for the West.
Daniel Cancian claims he was one of 5400 prisoners who were placed into labour camp factories every day, and those refusing to work were sent to the “torture block”, where they were beat, pepper sprayed and tasered.
He claims the prison is part of a network of highly profitable labour camps, and some Western corporations are aware of the use of forced slavery to make their products, but some products are sent to front companies first, repackaged and then sent to Western companies.
“They pepper sprayed one guy so much that the skin peeled off his face,” said Cancian.
Cancian also claims that prison staff would only allow him to sleep for 20 minutes at a time. He recounts the horrific ordeal:
“If you don’t work they’ll beat you. If you don’t work they’ll taser you.
“You’re whacked on the back of the head and you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re in survival mode right, you don’t know what you’re doing, and that’s the thing.
“From 9 in the morning till 9 at night you’ve got to sit there with your legs folded and arms folded.
“It’s horrific, absolutely horrific. As long as they have their bottom-line profit what do they care?”
He says that most of these products are flooding Western markets, and people need to wake up to the reality that a lot of our consumer products are still being built on the back of slavery.
There’s sufficient evidence to support his claims.
It has been well known that some of Apple’s products are made under slave-like conditions.