U.S. lawmakers pushed Wednesday for a ban on imports from a vast area of northwestern China because of the widespread use of forced labor on farms and factories in a region where the communist government has detained more than a million people in a campaign against ethnic minorities.
Attorneys from Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP recently helped to secure asylum for a young man from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region.
Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross calling on his department to take steps to prevent American companies and consumers from buying goods produced by forced labor in Xinjiang, China.
In a lively Muslim area of Nanchang, China, a huge factory produces computer screens, cameras and fingerprint scanners. These products go to a supplier to major international technology companies like Apple and Lenovo.
Nike said it was reviewing its suppliers’ hiring practices in China, after The Washington Post and an Australian think tank reported that members of the Uighur Muslim minority were making shoes for the American brand in conditions that suggested they were coerced.
Uygur Forced Labour Prevention Act would require companies using Xinjiang suppliers to prove that involuntary workers are not involved in production
Xinjiang’s Uyghurs are subject to a targeted campaign of surveillance and control. How did they get here?
A senior US senator on Tuesday accused US firms of willfully ignoring “horrific” forced labor conditions in China’s Xinjiang region and called on the Commerce Department to stop American companies and consumers buying goods produced by such labor.
US lawmakers unveiled legislation Wednesday urging the Trump administration to take action over claims of forced labor camps in Xinjiang, after a US government report found it was "nearly impossible" to ensure global supply chains were clean of tainted goods.
A bill cites reports of mass detention of minority groups in China and concerns about forced labor. This could spell problems for brands like Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike and Patagonia.
Bibliography of select news reports & academic works
Compiled by Professor Magnus Fiskesjö
The Uyghur Human Rights Project is deeply concerned by alarming new evidence that local residents are starving across the Uyghur homeland.
A new UHRP report analyzes a leaked document revealing ground-level implementation of the Chinese government’s mass detention program targeting Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.
China’s Unprecedented Campaign to Eradicate the Faith, Identity and Cultural Heritage of the Uyghur People
Remarks by Omer Kanat at the 15th Annual Reflections on the Holocaust and Genocides, January 26, 2019, Centers for Pluralism
The “laboratory of repression” in East Turkistan demands action by a long list of institutions. Universities, hospitals, and medical companies cannot claim ignorance. The cotton industry and tech companies are on notice. The World Bank and the Olympics are in the hot seat for complicity. History is watching. The lesson is very simple: business as usual must not continue.
A new report presents evidence of the complete or partial destruction of over 100 mosques by the Chinese government. Researcher Bahram Sintash and the Uyghur Human Rights Project cross-reference satellite imagery, photographs, and witness testimony to document the Chinese government’s campaign to wipe out the physical sites of Uyghur Islamic practice.
In 2015, Beijing was awarded the rights to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. While the government of the People’s Republic of China has overseen preparations for the 2022 Games under the motto of “joyful rendezvous upon pure ice and snow,” the same state has also overseen the development of a network of concentration camps in East Turkestan (also known as Xinjiang).