Scores of Chinese and foreign companies producing “well-known global brands” may be involved in human trafficking, forced labor and other human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region, a United Nations working group said on Monday, calling more attention to an issue that Beijing is increasingly on the defensive about.
Scores of Chinese and foreign companies producing “well-known global brands” may be involved in human trafficking, forced labour and other human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region, a United Nations working group said on Monday, calling more attention to an issue that Beijing is increasingly on the defensive about.
“Uygur workers have reportedly been subjected to exploitative working and abusive living conditions that may constitute arbitrary detention, human trafficking, forced labour and enslavement by the use of forced labour,” according to the statement about findings gathered by the OHCHR’s Working Group on Business and Human Rights.
The UN working group joins a chorus of calls from Western countries for China to address reports of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which Beijing has called fabrications, bullying and frequently compared to aggression by foreign powers throughout China’s “century of humiliation” that began in the early 1800s. Beijing maintains that authorities in Xinjiang are running vocational training facilities meant to combat terrorist ideologies.
The stand-off between Beijing and Western nations including the US escalated last week when Washington joined with Canada, Britain and the EU on sanctions against officials deemed responsible for human rights violations in Xinjiang.