Understanding China’s Forced Labor Policy Against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang (IANS Analysis)

New Delhi, Sep 23 (SocialNews.XYZ) Over the past decade, the global community and media have consistently highlighted the extensive atrocities that China has inflicted on its minority groups, particularly the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province. The Uyghurs, who account for about 45 percent of the region’s population, have endured various forms of oppression, including mass detention and indoctrination through so-called ‘vocational education and training centers’.

This has been accompanied by pervasive surveillance technologies, forced sterilization, and systematic sexual abuse. In August 2022, Michelle Bachelet, then the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, published a major report indicating that China’s treatment of the Uighurs could amount to “crimes against humanity.”

The report detailed large-scale arbitrary detentions, torture methods such as forced starvation and coerced medical procedures, as well as evidence of forced labour.

The so-called “re-education camps,” also referred to by various observers as “internment camps” or “concentration camps,” first emerged in 2014 and were significantly expanded in 2017. According to the Chinese government’s narrative, these actions are seen as necessary measures to combat terrorism, extremism and separatism.

In 2019, the governor of Xinjiang claimed that many people had “graduated” from these centers, giving the impression that many facilities had closed.

However, in 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute revealed that this closure was merely a facade for a shift to the formal prison system for the incarceration of individuals deemed a “threat” to state security, as evidenced by a marked increase in the number of prosecutions and convictions of Uighurs.

Furthermore, in order to avoid international scrutiny, China has deployed deceptive strategies to suppress its Uyghur Muslim minority in Xinjiang. One such tactic is presenting forced labor as a labor transfer initiative aimed at job creation, industrial development, and poverty reduction.

Adrian Zenz, a leading researcher on China’s policies in Xinjiang, examined the employment practices of Uighur Muslims in 2023 and found that the labor transfer program involved the forced relocation of Uighur Muslims to state-assigned jobs far from their home regions.

Not surprisingly, these workers are threatened with prosecution or imprisonment if they attempt to leave their jobs. Zenz alleged that this labor transfer initiative is used in the production of various goods, including cotton, tomatoes and tomato products, chilies and seasonal agricultural products, seafood, polysilicon for solar panels, lithium for electric vehicle batteries, and aluminum for batteries, vehicle bodies, and wheels.

Another method by which China forces Uyghur Muslims into involuntary labor is through the prison system. As noted earlier, recent years have seen alarming rates of persecution of Uyghurs. For example, Human Rights Watch reported that approximately half a million individuals were persecuted in Xinjiang between 2017 and 2022.

A leading media outlet also reported that in one Xinjiang district, one in 25 residents was convicted on terrorism-related charges, all of whom were Uighurs.

The accusations leveled against Uyghurs by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) range from serious charges such as terrorism to trivial ones such as “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.” Because forced labor is standard practice for prisoners, Uyghur Muslim prisoners are exploited to support China’s industrial growth by working in agriculture, mining, and manufacturing goods.

Disturbing reports of forced labor in Xinjiang have prompted Western governments to impose legal restrictions on imports from the region.

In 2021, US President Joe Biden introduced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which requires companies to demonstrate that their imports were not produced using forced labor involving Uighurs. Similarly, in April 2024, the European Parliament approved legislation, effective in 2027, that will screen imports linked to forced labor.

Notably, by the end of the first four months of this year, the EU had already imported goods worth $641 million from Xinjiang. According to a 2022 study, polysilicon produced in Xinjiang was essential for solar panels, accounting for about 95 percent of photovoltaic power in the world’s top 30 solar producing countries.

The same study found that Xinjiang is responsible for about 18 percent of globally traded processed tomato products and that one in five garments worldwide contains cotton sourced from the province.

Companies face significant challenges in identifying products made with Uyghur forced labor, as China strategically conceals these practices under various pretexts, including the so-called labor transfer program.

Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch published a report condemning major international automakers including General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen and Tesla for failing to meet responsible sourcing standards for aluminum linked to forced labor by Uighurs in Xinjiang.

China has recently emerged as a leading producer and exporter of automobiles, with Xinjiang emerging as an industrial center that has seen a dramatic increase in aluminum production, from one million tons in 2010 to six million tons in 2022.

About 9 percent of the world’s aluminum supply comes from Xinjiang. Because much of this aluminum is mixed with other metals to create finished products, it is extremely difficult to determine the extent to which forced labor contributes to the production of these goods.

While the international community is increasingly recognizing the serious abuses that China is committing against its vulnerable Uyghur population, the existing legal frameworks are inadequate due to the complex nature of its production processes and the lack of transparency surrounding them. As a result, there must be sustained pressure on China to push for a change in its practices and end the dehumanization, persecution and exploitation of Uyghur Muslims.

Source: IANS

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