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<\/a><\/p>\nJUNE 3, 2014<\/p>\n
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AN S.O.S. IN A SAKS BAG
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\nPOSTED BY\u00a0EMILY GREENHOUSE<\/span><\/a><\/cite><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n <\/p>\n
![\"saks](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/saks-bag.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn September, 2012, Stephanie Wilson, a twenty-eight-year-old Australian who lives in West Harlem, bought a pair of Hunter rain boots from Saks Fifth Avenue. She was digging for her receipt in the paper shopping bag when she discovered a letter inside that, in its urgency, started higher than the ruled paper\u2019s printed lines. \u201cHELP! HELP! HELP!!\u201d a man had written, in blue ink on white paper. He opened, \u201cHello!! I’m Njong Emmanuel Tohnain, Cameroonian of nationality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"saks](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/saks-bag-letter.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe writer explained that he had made the bag while captive in a Chinese prison factory, where he was being held after an arrest on accusations of fraud. He wrote, \u201cI\u2019ve been molested and tortured physically, morally, psychologically and spiritually for all the while without any given chance to contact my family and friends. We are ill-treated and work like slaves for 13 hours every day producing these bags in bulk in the prison factory. Please help to contact the United Nations Human Rights Department or if possible Samuel Eto\u2019o and let them know my sad story. I\u2019m Eto\u2019o\u2019s fan club manager in the University.\u201d He signed off, politely, \u201cThanks and sorry to bother you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\nWilson contacted the Laogai Research Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group established by a survivor of a Chinese slave-labor camp (or\u00a0laogai<\/i>) named Harry Wu. Over the following months, the foundation\u2019s legal arm and Serena Solomon, a reporter from the local-news Web site DNAinfo, located Njong\u2019s attorney and his newly activated Facebook account. (He was released from prison last year.) Together, they were able to contact Njong and verify that he had written the letter and determined\u2014based on their investigations online and in China\u2014that the details of his account checked out. (They are also consistent with other accounts of prison labor, Cole Goodrich, the legal consultant at the Laogai Foundation, told me.) The Laogai Foundation identified the company that exported Njong\u2019s shopping bags to the U.S. as\u00a0Elegant PrinPac<\/span><\/a>. That firm touts its work for Calvin Klein and Polo, its \u201cenvironmentally friendly products,\u201d and its \u201cquality management system.\u201d (Elegant PrinPac has not replied to requests for comment.)<\/span><\/p>\nSolomon published\u00a0a story<\/span><\/a>\u00a0about Njong\u2019s letter in April. I contacted Saks and its owner, Hudson\u2019s Bay Company, to ask about the letter and Saks\u2019s supply chain. A spokeswoman named Tiffany Bourr\u00e9 replied that the company has \u201cinvestigated the matter\u201d but was unable to determine whether Njong\u2019s letter was authentic and accurate, owing to \u201cthe lack of information and significant time delay between the discovery of the letter by the customer and notification to Saks more than a year later.\u201d Bourr\u00e9 said that the company prohibits slave labor and has measures in place to avoid its use in Saks\u2019s supply chain, such as audits, which are sometimes unannounced, and a requirement that international venders and suppliers follow laws barring forced labor. I asked whether Saks had changed its practices in response to Njong\u2019s letter, and she answered that it hadn\u2019t, though it was modifying some policies as part of its integration into Hudson\u2019s Bay,\u00a0which acquired it last year<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\nRecently, I spoke to Njong myself. He is thirty-four and lives in Dubai, and has an animated and intelligent manner by phone. Njong was raised in Yaound\u00e9, the capital of Cameroon, and learned both English and French while growing up. He said that, in May, 2011, he had been teaching English in Shenzhen, China, when he was arrested on accusations of fraud, which he said he never committed, and held in a detention center for ten months. Later, he was moved to Qingdao, in the eastern Shandong province, for a three-year prison sentence. He had picked up Chinese while teaching, and so he translated while locked up, whenever the prison authorities tapped him. Most of the time, he sewed clothes, assembled electronics, and made bags. \u201cIt was tiring and boring at the same time,\u201d he said of the work. Eventually, he and another African prisoner grew so desperate that they decided they\u2019d rather be killed than continue. \u201cIf I have to die, I don\u2019t care now,\u201d he told the guards. \u201cI prefer not to get back to the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nNjong says that he was permitted no outside contact, and was allowed pen and paper only to record productivity. His family figured he was dead. Although he was constantly monitored, Njong resolved to reach the outside, to put a trace of himself into the products he fabricated \u201cthat were going to be exported to other countries like the U.K. and the U.S. and Australia and Germany.\u201d He figured, \u201cIf someone could ever hear me somewhere, maybe somebody, in the course of using, could come to the letter and come to my rescue.\u201d The letter that Wilson found was one of five\u2014in either French or English\u2014that he stuffed into bags during his imprisonment. He crawled under his bed covers to scribble.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n***<\/span><\/center>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nApril marked the one-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than eleven hundred garment workers\u2014the worst industrial accident in the modern garment industry. The disaster led to an uptick in social concern about manufacturing. It also led to changes: more frequent inspections, new regulations, investigations by\u00a0news<\/span><\/a>\u00a0outlets<\/span><\/a>\u00a0into the history of our clothes, plus nifty\u00a0new consumer-responsibility apps<\/span><\/a>. But\u00a0forced labor<\/span><\/a>\u00a0like what Njong says he endured has gotten far less attention.<\/span><\/p>\nUnfree labor has, of course, existed throughout history. In 1957, the International Labour Organization adopted a formal\u00a0resolution<\/span><\/a>\u00a0abolishing forced labor worldwide. Today, the organization\u00a0estimates<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that at least 12.3 million people, globally, are victims of compulsory labor. China\u2019s system of prison facilities, established in the early fifties by Mao Zedong, is particularly massive. Chinese camps, tethered to a notion that criminality springs from ignorance, stress moral instruction and re\u00ebducation through labor. According to a tally of industries\u00a0on the U.S. Department of Labor Web site<\/span><\/a>, the Chinese industries that use forced labor include those making artificial flowers, bricks, Christmas decorations, coal, cotton, electronics, fireworks, footwear, garments, nails, textiles, and toys.<\/span><\/p>\nKevin Slaten, the program coordinator at the human-rights organization China Labor Watch, told me that a number of letters like Njong\u2019s have surfaced in recent years. Last June, the\u00a0Times<\/i>\u00a0reported<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on one, folded into a pack of Halloween decorations bought at an Oregon Kmart, which read, \u201cSir: If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization.\u201d At the time, a spokesman for Sears Holdings, which owns Kmart, told the reporter, Andrew Jacobs, that \u201can internal investigation prompted by the discovery of the letter uncovered no violations of company rules that bar the use of forced labor.\u201d Slaten argues that American corporations, to meet their profit goals, have developed a convoluted system of contracting and subcontracting that is designed \u201cin a way that allows them to plead ignorance\u201d about labor problems. TheU.S. Tariff Act of 1930<\/span><\/a>\u00a0bars the inflow of goods made with forced labor\u2014but the law contains a \u201cconsumptive demand\u201d exception, which allows goods, even if they are made by forced laborers, to be imported if the demand from consumers can somehow not be met otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\nThere have been some efforts to reduce forced labor. Kenneth Kennedy, a senior policy adviser on forced-labor programs for the Department of Homeland Security, told me by phone that the U.S. and China have an unusual\u00a0memorandum of understanding on prison labor<\/span><\/a>. Signed under President George H. W. Bush in 1992, before China\u2019s accession to the World Trade Organization, the agreement prohibited the importation of goods made by Chinese prison labor, and set terms for reports on and investigations of \u201ccompanies, enterprises or units suspected of violating relevant regulations and laws\u201d made \u201cupon the request of one Party.\u201d The Clinton Administration, in 1994, elaborated on the agreement, requiring the Chinese government to respond within ninety days to a U.S. government request to visit a factory (and vice versa).<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThose two documents are fairly unique,\u201d Kennedy explained. \u201cWe don\u2019t have them with other countries.\u201d The United States cannot enforce its own labor laws overseas, but if commodities coming into the United States are found to be produced by prison, forced, or indentured labor, it can impose various penalties\u2014financial and criminal\u2014on the companies importing the commodities. (In 2001, the Allied International Manufacturing (Nanjing) Stationery Company Ltd. pleaded guilty to federal charges of forced prison labor, becoming\u00a0the first Chinese company<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. so convicted. Kennedy told me that the stationery firm faced financial penalties.) But China, Kennedy explained in an e-mail, cannot be penalized directly for the production of such products. Kennedy didn\u2019t know of any instances in which the U.S. government sent investigators to factories in China and found evidence of forced or prison labor. He declined to comment on Saks because the government considers the case open. (When I asked for clarification, Justin Cole, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who had helped arrange my conversations with Kennedy, said that he \u201cwill not be able to comment any further on the case.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\nThere\u2019s also change on the other side of the supply chain. Late last year, China\u2019s Parliament\u00a0voted to end its fifty-five-year-old system<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of \u201cRe\u00ebducation Through Labor\u201d camps. But these camps already regularly break the law\u2014for instance by practicing torture\u2014so human-rights groups\u00a0remain<\/span><\/a>\u00a0skeptical.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Amnesty International<\/span><\/a>\u00a0believes that extrajudicial jails and drug-rehabilitation centers are the new sites of punishment for political and religious dissidents. It still falls to courageous individuals like Njong to risk abuse and violence,\u00a0Solomon Northup<\/span><\/a>-like, in trying to make themselves heard.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n***<\/span><\/center>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNjong told me that he was discharged from prison last December, escorted to Beijing, and put on a plane to Cameroon. He got a two-month tourist visa to go to the United Arab Emirates\u2014renewable once\u2014after borrowing five thousand dollars from a cousin. Over the phone, I asked Njong why he didn\u2019t stay in Cameroon after his return from China. He explained that he left in the first place because of his home country\u2019s swelling corruption. \u201cDubai was the place I could obtain a visa as fast as possible,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\nNjong found work at a cleaning company in Abu Dhabi. \u201cWe get up so early, four o\u2019clock,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe company acts like brokers: they get workers and send us to locations. My location is a veterinary hospital. We go in the morning and we clean\u2014the animal waste.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nHe doesn\u2019t talk often with his family. \u201cMaking calls from here is expensive,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m still waiting for my first salary. I never want to tell them when things are rough. I\u2019m just struggling with my life to see that anything good can come from life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nI asked about whether he might be compensated for his troubles. Doesn\u2019t China owe him? Don\u2019t any of the others along the supply chain that brought the bag into Stephanie Wilson\u2019s hands? \u201cI don\u2019t think the hours are worth it, seeking compensation,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not easy. It\u2019s not something anybody can just do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nTop: a mosaic of labor-camp prisoners in China at the Laogai Museum in Washington, D.C. Photograph by Ricky Carioti\/The Washington Post\/Getty. Tohnain Emmanuel Njong\u2019s letter courtesy of Stephanie Wilson.<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In September, 2012, Stephanie Wilson, a twenty-eight-year-old Australian who lives in West Harlem, bought a pair of Hunter rain boots from Saks Fifth Avenue. She was digging for her receipt in the paper shopping bag when she discovered a letter inside that, in its urgency, started higher than the ruled paper\u2019s printed lines. \u201cHELP! HELP! HELP!!\u201d a man had written, in blue ink on white paper. He opened, \u201cHello!! I’m Njong Emmanuel Tohnain, Cameroonian of nationality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The writer explained that he had made the bag while captive in a Chinese prison factory, where he was being held after an arrest on accusations of fraud. He wrote, \u201cI\u2019ve been molested and tortured physically, morally, psychologically and spiritually for all the while without any given chance to contact my family and friends. We are ill-treated and work like slaves for 13 hours every day producing these bags in bulk in the prison factory. Please help to contact the United Nations Human Rights Department or if possible Samuel Eto\u2019o and let them know my sad story. I\u2019m Eto\u2019o\u2019s fan club manager in the University.\u201d He signed off, politely, \u201cThanks and sorry to bother you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Wilson contacted the Laogai Research Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group established by a survivor of a Chinese slave-labor camp (or\u00a0laogai<\/i>) named Harry Wu. Over the following months, the foundation\u2019s legal arm and Serena Solomon, a reporter from the local-news Web site DNAinfo, located Njong\u2019s attorney and his newly activated Facebook account. (He was released from prison last year.) Together, they were able to contact Njong and verify that he had written the letter and determined\u2014based on their investigations online and in China\u2014that the details of his account checked out. (They are also consistent with other accounts of prison labor, Cole Goodrich, the legal consultant at the Laogai Foundation, told me.) The Laogai Foundation identified the company that exported Njong\u2019s shopping bags to the U.S. as\u00a0Elegant PrinPac<\/span><\/a>. That firm touts its work for Calvin Klein and Polo, its \u201cenvironmentally friendly products,\u201d and its \u201cquality management system.\u201d (Elegant PrinPac has not replied to requests for comment.)<\/span><\/p>\n Solomon published\u00a0a story<\/span><\/a>\u00a0about Njong\u2019s letter in April. I contacted Saks and its owner, Hudson\u2019s Bay Company, to ask about the letter and Saks\u2019s supply chain. A spokeswoman named Tiffany Bourr\u00e9 replied that the company has \u201cinvestigated the matter\u201d but was unable to determine whether Njong\u2019s letter was authentic and accurate, owing to \u201cthe lack of information and significant time delay between the discovery of the letter by the customer and notification to Saks more than a year later.\u201d Bourr\u00e9 said that the company prohibits slave labor and has measures in place to avoid its use in Saks\u2019s supply chain, such as audits, which are sometimes unannounced, and a requirement that international venders and suppliers follow laws barring forced labor. I asked whether Saks had changed its practices in response to Njong\u2019s letter, and she answered that it hadn\u2019t, though it was modifying some policies as part of its integration into Hudson\u2019s Bay,\u00a0which acquired it last year<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Recently, I spoke to Njong myself. He is thirty-four and lives in Dubai, and has an animated and intelligent manner by phone. Njong was raised in Yaound\u00e9, the capital of Cameroon, and learned both English and French while growing up. He said that, in May, 2011, he had been teaching English in Shenzhen, China, when he was arrested on accusations of fraud, which he said he never committed, and held in a detention center for ten months. Later, he was moved to Qingdao, in the eastern Shandong province, for a three-year prison sentence. He had picked up Chinese while teaching, and so he translated while locked up, whenever the prison authorities tapped him. Most of the time, he sewed clothes, assembled electronics, and made bags. \u201cIt was tiring and boring at the same time,\u201d he said of the work. Eventually, he and another African prisoner grew so desperate that they decided they\u2019d rather be killed than continue. \u201cIf I have to die, I don\u2019t care now,\u201d he told the guards. \u201cI prefer not to get back to the world.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Njong says that he was permitted no outside contact, and was allowed pen and paper only to record productivity. His family figured he was dead. Although he was constantly monitored, Njong resolved to reach the outside, to put a trace of himself into the products he fabricated \u201cthat were going to be exported to other countries like the U.K. and the U.S. and Australia and Germany.\u201d He figured, \u201cIf someone could ever hear me somewhere, maybe somebody, in the course of using, could come to the letter and come to my rescue.\u201d The letter that Wilson found was one of five\u2014in either French or English\u2014that he stuffed into bags during his imprisonment. He crawled under his bed covers to scribble.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n April marked the one-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than eleven hundred garment workers\u2014the worst industrial accident in the modern garment industry. The disaster led to an uptick in social concern about manufacturing. It also led to changes: more frequent inspections, new regulations, investigations by\u00a0news<\/span><\/a>\u00a0outlets<\/span><\/a>\u00a0into the history of our clothes, plus nifty\u00a0new consumer-responsibility apps<\/span><\/a>. But\u00a0forced labor<\/span><\/a>\u00a0like what Njong says he endured has gotten far less attention.<\/span><\/p>\n Unfree labor has, of course, existed throughout history. In 1957, the International Labour Organization adopted a formal\u00a0resolution<\/span><\/a>\u00a0abolishing forced labor worldwide. Today, the organization\u00a0estimates<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that at least 12.3 million people, globally, are victims of compulsory labor. China\u2019s system of prison facilities, established in the early fifties by Mao Zedong, is particularly massive. Chinese camps, tethered to a notion that criminality springs from ignorance, stress moral instruction and re\u00ebducation through labor. According to a tally of industries\u00a0on the U.S. Department of Labor Web site<\/span><\/a>, the Chinese industries that use forced labor include those making artificial flowers, bricks, Christmas decorations, coal, cotton, electronics, fireworks, footwear, garments, nails, textiles, and toys.<\/span><\/p>\n Kevin Slaten, the program coordinator at the human-rights organization China Labor Watch, told me that a number of letters like Njong\u2019s have surfaced in recent years. Last June, the\u00a0Times<\/i>\u00a0reported<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on one, folded into a pack of Halloween decorations bought at an Oregon Kmart, which read, \u201cSir: If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization.\u201d At the time, a spokesman for Sears Holdings, which owns Kmart, told the reporter, Andrew Jacobs, that \u201can internal investigation prompted by the discovery of the letter uncovered no violations of company rules that bar the use of forced labor.\u201d Slaten argues that American corporations, to meet their profit goals, have developed a convoluted system of contracting and subcontracting that is designed \u201cin a way that allows them to plead ignorance\u201d about labor problems. TheU.S. Tariff Act of 1930<\/span><\/a>\u00a0bars the inflow of goods made with forced labor\u2014but the law contains a \u201cconsumptive demand\u201d exception, which allows goods, even if they are made by forced laborers, to be imported if the demand from consumers can somehow not be met otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n There have been some efforts to reduce forced labor. Kenneth Kennedy, a senior policy adviser on forced-labor programs for the Department of Homeland Security, told me by phone that the U.S. and China have an unusual\u00a0memorandum of understanding on prison labor<\/span><\/a>. Signed under President George H. W. Bush in 1992, before China\u2019s accession to the World Trade Organization, the agreement prohibited the importation of goods made by Chinese prison labor, and set terms for reports on and investigations of \u201ccompanies, enterprises or units suspected of violating relevant regulations and laws\u201d made \u201cupon the request of one Party.\u201d The Clinton Administration, in 1994, elaborated on the agreement, requiring the Chinese government to respond within ninety days to a U.S. government request to visit a factory (and vice versa).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThose two documents are fairly unique,\u201d Kennedy explained. \u201cWe don\u2019t have them with other countries.\u201d The United States cannot enforce its own labor laws overseas, but if commodities coming into the United States are found to be produced by prison, forced, or indentured labor, it can impose various penalties\u2014financial and criminal\u2014on the companies importing the commodities. (In 2001, the Allied International Manufacturing (Nanjing) Stationery Company Ltd. pleaded guilty to federal charges of forced prison labor, becoming\u00a0the first Chinese company<\/span><\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. so convicted. Kennedy told me that the stationery firm faced financial penalties.) But China, Kennedy explained in an e-mail, cannot be penalized directly for the production of such products. Kennedy didn\u2019t know of any instances in which the U.S. government sent investigators to factories in China and found evidence of forced or prison labor. He declined to comment on Saks because the government considers the case open. (When I asked for clarification, Justin Cole, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who had helped arrange my conversations with Kennedy, said that he \u201cwill not be able to comment any further on the case.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s also change on the other side of the supply chain. Late last year, China\u2019s Parliament\u00a0voted to end its fifty-five-year-old system<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of \u201cRe\u00ebducation Through Labor\u201d camps. But these camps already regularly break the law\u2014for instance by practicing torture\u2014so human-rights groups\u00a0remain<\/span><\/a>\u00a0skeptical.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Amnesty International<\/span><\/a>\u00a0believes that extrajudicial jails and drug-rehabilitation centers are the new sites of punishment for political and religious dissidents. It still falls to courageous individuals like Njong to risk abuse and violence,\u00a0Solomon Northup<\/span><\/a>-like, in trying to make themselves heard.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Njong told me that he was discharged from prison last December, escorted to Beijing, and put on a plane to Cameroon. He got a two-month tourist visa to go to the United Arab Emirates\u2014renewable once\u2014after borrowing five thousand dollars from a cousin. Over the phone, I asked Njong why he didn\u2019t stay in Cameroon after his return from China. He explained that he left in the first place because of his home country\u2019s swelling corruption. \u201cDubai was the place I could obtain a visa as fast as possible,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n Njong found work at a cleaning company in Abu Dhabi. \u201cWe get up so early, four o\u2019clock,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe company acts like brokers: they get workers and send us to locations. My location is a veterinary hospital. We go in the morning and we clean\u2014the animal waste.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t talk often with his family. \u201cMaking calls from here is expensive,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m still waiting for my first salary. I never want to tell them when things are rough. I\u2019m just struggling with my life to see that anything good can come from life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I asked about whether he might be compensated for his troubles. Doesn\u2019t China owe him? Don\u2019t any of the others along the supply chain that brought the bag into Stephanie Wilson\u2019s hands? \u201cI don\u2019t think the hours are worth it, seeking compensation,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not easy. It\u2019s not something anybody can just do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Top: a mosaic of labor-camp prisoners in China at the Laogai Museum in Washington, D.C. Photograph by Ricky Carioti\/The Washington Post\/Getty. Tohnain Emmanuel Njong\u2019s letter courtesy of Stephanie Wilson.<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n