This article was first published by Wisconsin Watch.
Day after day over nearly five years in Chishan Prison, Lee Ming-che walked the five minutes from his cell to one of several manufacturing spaces on prison grounds.
The prison in China’s central Hunan Province houses political prisoners like Lee, a renowned human rights activist who met with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her consequential 2022 visit to Taiwan. Lee, a Taiwanese college administrator, was convicted in China of “subverting state power” in 2017 and released in 2022.
In an interview in Mandarin with Wisconsin Watch from his home in Taiwan, Lee said officials forced him and hundreds of other Chishan prisoners to work roughly 13 hours a day, seven days a week with just a few days off around the Chinese New Year. His pay? The equivalent of about 48 cents a day.
“I was like a robot, doing work in the daytime and then returning to the cell (at night),” Lee recalled.
His tasks included cutting polyester fabric and sewing it together to make work gloves, producing at least 200 pairs a day.
He said he knew the gloves were destined for the United States.
He later learned about the company whose brand was on the gloves, stamped with a thunderbolt and the word “Milwaukee.” Shown photos of Milwaukee Tool gloves for sale at two Home Depot stores in Madison, Lee verified four types of gloves he was forced to make — Free-Flex, Demolition, Performance and Winter Performance.
“I can recognize the models and the logo...
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