On August 16, an independent expert appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council released saying it was “reasonable to conclude” that Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region are being subjected to forced labor.
While the report acknowledges that China’s work programs “may create employment opportunities for minorities and enhance their incomes,” it also notes the “involuntary nature” of the labor in many cases.
Workers, it says, are subjected to “excessive surveillance, abusive living and working conditions, restriction of movement through internment, threats, physical and/or sexual violence and other inhuman or degrading treatment.” Such treatment may constitute “enslavement as a crime against humanity,” the report states.
Beijing reportedly the release of the report, and Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin denounced it on August 17.
“[A] certain special rapporteur chooses to believe in lies and disinformation about Xinjiang spread by the U.S. and some other Western countries and anti-China forces, abuse his authority,” Wang said, referring to Tomoya Obokata, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery.
Wang accused Obokata of “denigrating” China and serving “as a political tool for anti-China forces.”
“There has never been 'forced labor’ in Xinjiang,” Wang said. “The Chinese government follows a people-centered development philosophy and attaches great importance to protecting the rights and interests of workers.”
That is false.
The U.N. report drew on a growing body of independent academic research, open sources, victim testimony and government accounts to reach its conclusions about forced labor in Xinjiang, where more than 1 million people .
Still, providing an accurate account of what is going on in Xinjiang is not easy.
China’s restricted media environment and limited access in Xinjiang greatly complicate verification efforts.
The U.S.-based Workers Rights Consortium that “extreme levels of repression and surveillance” in Xinjiang stop brands and retailers from using labor rights audits “to ensure that their supply chains are free from forced labor.”
China unfettered access to outside observers seeking to investigate abuse claims in Xinjiang.
Outgoing U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet visited Xinjiang in May she “was not able to speak to any Uyghurs currently detained or their families during the visit.” She also said she “was accompanied by government officials throughout the visit to Xinjiang.”
Still, that controversial trip, which Bachelet explicitly stated “was not an investigation,” to exonerate itself of genocide charges.
In reaction to Bachelet’s trip, 39 scholars of the Uyghur region argued in an open letter that “China is committing crimes against humanity at a scale that extends far beyond the mass internment program.”
The letter’s signatories said many of the internment and indoctrination camps had recently closed, adding that “a substantial portion of internees from now-closed camps have been transferred to formal prisons after sham trials, while others have been placed in forced labor programs.”
The scholars added that the abundant evidence of “atrocities in Xinjiang” had led them to an “extraordinary consensus” rarely seen in the academic field.
The U.N. report said China’s “forced labor scheme” includes a vocational skills education and training center system, under which “minorities are detained and subjected to work placements.”
the system is used to “eliminate sources of terrorism.”
The U.N. report cites groups and researchers who have come under attack from Beijing for alleged bias, including Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, who has written extensively about China’s Uyghurs. China of being “a right-wing Christian” looking to slander the Chinese Communist Party.
In June, Zenz titled “Unemployment Monitoring and Early Warning: New Trends in Xinjiang’s Coercive Labor Placement Systems.”
The report, drawing on Chinese planning documents and other internal Chinese Communist Party sources, found that “Xinjiang’s labor transfers became highly coercive” at the same time as the mass internment program for Uyghurs began in 2017.
In 2018, The New York Times that “mounting evidence suggests a system of forced labor is emerging from the camps.”
The evidence included accounts from the regions, satellite images and official documents showing that more and more detainees were “being sent to new factories, built inside or near the camps,” with “little choice but to accept jobs and follow orders.”