The US is intensifying its crackdown on forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region

January 13, 2021
By Marc Bain

The US government today issued a sweeping ban on imports containing any cotton or tomato products originating in China’s Xinjiang region, where at least 1 million members of the country’s Uyghur ethnic minority are estimated to be held in camps and widely pressed into forced labor.

The order is the most recent effort by the US to pressure China to end a campaign of oppression against the predominately Muslim Uyghurs increasingly likened to genocide and to guard American shoppers from unwittingly purchasing products made with forced labor. Xinjiang is the center of China’s large cotton industry, responsible for as much as 85% of the country’s cotton, and a major producer of tomatoes. Researchers and authorities have compiled ample evidence of Uyghurs being compelled to work the fields and in the factories powering these industries.

Read the full article at Quartz