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BEIJING: Hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority workers in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region are forced to pick cotton by hand through a coercive state labor scheme, according to a report.
Rights activists have said that the northwest region of Xinjiang is home to a vast network of extrajudicial internment camps that have imprisoned at least a million people, which China has defended as vocational training centers to counter extremism.
A report by the Washington-based think tank, the Center for Global Policy, released Monday, which referenced government documents online, said that in 2018 three Uighur-majority regions within Xinjiang sent at least 570,000 people to collect cotton as part of a state coercive labor. transfer scheme.
Researchers estimate that the total number of people involved in coerced cotton picking in Xinjiang, which relies heavily on manual labor, exceeds that number by “several hundred thousand.”
Xinjiang is a global center for the cultivation, producing more than 20 percent of the world’s cotton, and the report warns of “potentially drastic consequences” for global supply chains.
About a fifth of the yarn used in the United States comes from Xinjiang.
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Beijing said all the detainees have “graduated” from the centers, but reports have suggested that many former inmates have been transferred to low-skilled factory jobs, often linked to the camps.
But the think tank report said participants in the labor transfer scheme are heavily watched by police, with point-to-point transfers, “military-style administration” and ideological training, citing government documents.
“It is clear that labor transfers for cotton picking carry a very high risk of forced labor,” Adrian Zenz, who discovered the documents, wrote in the report.
“Some minorities may show some degree of consent in relation to this process, and may benefit financially. However … it is impossible to define where coercion ends and local consent can begin.
The report also says there is a strong ideological incentive to enforce the scheme, as rising rural incomes allow officials to achieve state-mandated poverty alleviation goals.
China has vigorously denied the forced labor allegations involving Uighurs in Xinjiang and accused the United States of wanting to “suppress Xinjiang companies.”
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Beijing also says that training programs, job plans and better education have helped eradicate extremism in the region.
Earlier this month, the United States banned imports of cotton produced by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a major paramilitary entity, which covers about a third of the crop produced in the entire region.
Another bill banning all imports from Xinjiang has yet to be approved by the US Senate.
Several international brands, including Adidas, Gap and Nike, have been accused of using Uighur forced labor in their textile supply chains, according to a March report from the Australian Institute for Strategic Policy.
