Canada Recognized China s Actions Against Uyghurs As Genocide. Here s What You Need To Know
Destruction of religious and cultural sites, forced labour and arbitrary detention: China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims needs to be held to account.
March 15, 2021
Protesters gather outside the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, Monday, February 22, 2021. (Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld)
Canada’s parliament recently voted to declare China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim populations as genocide, making them the second country to do so after the U.S. Here’s what you need to know about Uyghurs, what’s happening to them in China and why there’s been an international push to recognize genocide and impose consequences on China in attempts to stop the ongoing human rights abuses.
As the international outcry grows over the Chinese government’s arbitrary detention, forced labor and other egregious abuses against Turkic Muslims in the northwest region of Xinjiang, 12 Japanese companies recently told Kyodo News that they would “cease or consider ceasing business with business partners found to be using forced labor.”
Ugly secrets hiding in the darkest crevices of fashion’s supply chains are being dragged into the light. Last summer, as the sector battled the punishing fallout from the coronavirus crisis, retailers were embroiled in allegations of modern slavery in Leicester garment factories.
Now, widespread reports of forced labour among Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in China’s Xinjiang region are forcing businesses – and governments – to address yet more examples of exploitation in fashion.
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority labourers are being forced to pick Xinjiang’s cotton by hand through coercive government schemes, a report published by research institute the Center for Global Policy revealed last December. There is a long history of discord between the Uyghur people and the Chinese government, which is detaining the ethnic group in “re-education camps”, purportedly to prevent separatist violence.
How to ensure your clothes haven t been made using Uighur labour
Marks & Spencer has pledged to stop buying cotton from the devastated region - but will other brands join them?
18 February 2021 • 6:00am
A protest in Turkey against Chinese oppression of the Uighur community
Credit: AP
Earlier this month, an astounding BBC report was released, detailing the ways in which Uighur women have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured in detention camps in Xinjiang, western China.
Or perhaps it wasn’t as astounding as all that. Horrific as the details are, we have known about the presence of these camps and the appalling treatment of the Uighurs – an ethnic-minority Muslim group who are also Chinese nationals – for years.
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A recent blurb in the
Jewish Virtual Library raised my eyebrows. It dug right into my shoe and clothing brand snobbery psyche. I look at the label before trying it on. I’m a closet Carrie Bradshaw sans New York City. Brands and brand names pull me into a vortex of special interest and curiosity. The heading