Over 570,000 Uighurs involved in China cotton coerced labour: Report
BEIJING: Hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority labourers in China's northwestern Xinjiang region are being forced to pick cotton through a coercive state-run scheme, a report has said.
The
research published Monday by Washington-based think tank the Center for
Global Policy is likely to heap more pressure on global brands such as
Nike, Gap and Adidas, which have been accused of using Uighur forced
labour in their textile supply chains.
Rights activists have said
Xinjiang is home to a vast network of extrajudicial internment camps
that have imprisoned at least one million people, which China has
defended as vocational training centres to counter extremism.
The
report — which referenced online government documents — said the total
number involved in three majority-Uighur regions exceeds a 2018 estimate
of 517,000 people forced to pick cotton as part of the scheme by
hundreds of thousands.
Researchers warned of the "potentially
drastic consequences" for global cotton supply chains, with Xinjiang
producing more than 20 percent of the world's cotton and around a fifth
of the yarn used in the United States coming from the region.
The
BBC reported that it had asked 30 major international brands if they
intended to continue sourcing products from China as a result of the
findings — of those that replied, only four said they had a strict
policy of demanding that items sourced from anywhere in China do not use
raw cotton from Xinjiang.
Beijing
said that all detainees have "graduated" from the centres, but reports
have suggested that many former inmates have been transferred to
low-skilled manufacturing factory jobs, often linked to the camps.
But
the think tank report said labour transfer scheme participants were
heavily surveilled by police, with point-to-point transfers,
"military-style management" and ideological training, citing government
documents.
"It is clear that labour transfers for cotton-picking
involve a very high risk of forced labour," Adrian Zenz, who uncovered
the documents, wrote in the report.
"Some minorities may exhibit a
degree of consent in relation to this process, and they may benefit
financially. However... it is impossible to define where coercion ends
and where local consent may begin."
The report also says there is a
strong ideological incentive to enforce the scheme, as the boost in
rural incomes allows officials to hit state-mandated poverty alleviation
targets.
China has strongly denied allegations of forced labour involving Uighurs in Xinjiang and says training programmes, work schemes and better education have helped stamp out extremism in the region.
When
asked about the report on Tuesday, Beijing said workers "of all
ethnicities in Xinjiang sign labour contracts with enterprises based on
their own voluntary choice of occupation."
Foreign ministry
spokesman Wang Wenbin also attacked the report's author Zenz, saying he
was the "backbone of an anti-China research organisation set up under
the manipulation of the US intelligence agency, which mainly fabricates
rumours against China and defames China."
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