"Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Sardine Cannery!"

 

When I was young I loved the children's novel Help! I Am a Prisoner in a Toothpaste Factory by John Antrobus. It tells the story of a young boy who is brushing his teeth one day when he sees the message in the title marked on a line of toothpaste. This cry for help sets him off on an adventure. The novel was dramatized in the children's TV series Jackanory, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RScW_gCsGZs. Now I have found a disturbing real life example that reminded me of it. It doesn't involve toothpaste, but sardines. Customers in Egypt who recently bought cans of sardines from the Janzour company had a bit of a shock. Tucked in amongst the processed fish were pieces of cardboard with messages crudely written on them in biro. Soon afterwards other people in other countries across the Middle East and North Africa reported the same thing. These messages were written in Arabic and varied in their verbatim content, clearly being left by a number of different people; but their meaning was always the same. They were written by individuals claiming to be prisoners of the company. They had allegedly been kidnapped and incarcerated in the cannery and were being forced to work as slaves. Their captors had forbidden them to use telephones or the internet and so they were begging for help in the only way they could. Source: https://x.com/Imposter_Edits/status/1421729971798695939.
 
The Janzour company is based in Libya, a country notorious for using slave labour; at least since Muammar Gaddafi was deposed. (To be accurate he was beaten to death in the streets by a lynch mob organized by Western intelligence.) Of course the term "slave labour" is often used as a pejorative word for any unpleasant and low paid drudgery, even in my own country, the UK; but in this case the term could be applied more literally. I am already aware that Libya employs an entire sector of cheap immigrant workers, mostly from other parts of Africa, but up until now it was assumed that these people were free agents who could come and go as they pleased, and were only putting up with the appalling wages and conditions in Libya because it was comparatively better than what they could achieve at home. This is different. The workers accuse their employers of forcing them to work for them against their will and physically preventing them from leaving. How? Do they have to sleep in locked cells? Are their ankles chained up? Are there warders there with whips? You might wonder why I care, after all I am not a "refugees welcome" person; and I have called repeatedly for immigration to the UK to be stopped by any means necessary, for example see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2026/05/third-rail-radio-programme-240.html. But this does not mean I am a monster. I do not condone the abusive treatment of migrants. I really hope these prisoners are freed at some point, but who is going to do it? Hillary Clinton? MI6? The CIA?... I wonder how much more of this kind of thing is going on in the world. Is it even happening in Wales? My interviews with Alan Tait leads me to suspect so, see: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2023/03/programme-498-podcast-alan-tait.html. Will this kind of slavery become more common around the world, even universal? It's a worrying possibility.
See here for more background about Libya: https://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.com/2012/10/programme-19-podcast-david-shayler.html.