Washington : China, the world’s second largest economy is the leading global hotspot for the goods’ manufacturing by forced labour and abusive child labour as per the report of US Department of Labor released on Wednesday. It highlighted growing concern over treatment of Uighur Muslims in the country’s Xinjiang region.
Department of labour released a list of chinese goods produced by child labour. It included 17 Chinese-made products, from gloves to Christmas decorations in which children are involved as manpower, most of them involve Uighur Muslims. It is possibly estimated that 100,000 Uighurs along with other ethnic and religious minorities in China are working in conditions of forced labour following detention in Chinese Communist Party re-education camps,” the release further stated.
The Uighur belongs to Xinjiang region in northwest China. Uighur, a minority that faces repression from the Chinese government. US Department of Homeland Security earlier said that it will ban the import of goods made in Xinjiang to combat alleged forced labour practices.
The United Nations claimed as per reports 1 million Uighur Muslims have been detained in camps there. Human rights groups say Chinese authorities have detained more than a million people mostly Muslim ethnic groups such as Uighurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz in a detention centres as part of an assimilation campaign. Australian think tank report this year found that thousands of Uighurs had been moved to work in factories across China as a forced labour. The DOL in its report stated similar inference, it said that the transportation of Uighurs broadened the risk of forced labor in supply chains.
Some 25 million people globally are estimated by the U.N.’s International Labour Organization (ILO) to be victims of forced labour.
The DOL list featured 155 goods from 77 countries which are produced by child labour or forced labour. Ith has increased by adding about two dozen items since the 2018 report such as Ethiopian khat, a plant used as a stimulant, and fish from Taiwan’s distant-water fleet.
The U.S. government pointed out it banned the import of palm oil from a Malaysian company on suspicions that the products were made with forced labour. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency said it has issued 13 orders to block goods made with forced labor so far in fiscal year 2020.