Report Shows Scale of Forced Labor in Xinjiang Cotton Industry
Posted by John Chan | Dec 15, 2020
A new report from the Center for Global Policy has revealed that systematic forced labor has been employed in a much greater proportion of the Xinjiang cotton trade than previously thought. In the report, researcher Adrian Zenz finds that more than 500,000 people have been forced to pick cotton as part of the Chinese government’s poverty alleviation campaign. Other recent research has exposed widespread abuses in the sprawling detention camps as well as the use of digital surveillance and algorithmic policing to monitor and arbitrarily arrest Uyghurs. This latest research focuses on the systematic abuse of people who aren’t put in the detention camps—often older Uyghurs. The Guardian’s Helen Davidson