A group of activists demonstrating against China’s use of Uyghur Muslims as slaves crashed German automaker Volkswagen’s shareholder meeting in Berlin on Wednesday.
Some of the protesters entered the exhibit hall where the meeting was held. Security escorted them out after they chanted slogans and threw cake at Volkswagen executives.
The activists were protesting against Volkswagen’s plant in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which is known to the Uyghurs as their homeland of East Turkistan. The Volkswagen plant is a joint venture with China’s SAIC Motor Corporation.
Volkswagen insists it opposes slavery and that none of its employees in Urumqi are working under duress. Skeptics point out that the oppressed Uyghur people, kept under constant surveillance by the Chinese government and banished to concentration camps for the slightest offense, cannot speak freely to foreign observers.
The Chinese Communist Party has a history of tightly stage-managing visits to Xinjiang, most notoriously when former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet made her much-delayed trip to the region in May 2022. Bachelet left her post soon afterward under heavy criticism for playing along with Chinese officials.
Uyghur activists believe China used similar tactics when Volkswagen executives looked for signs of forced labor at the Urumqi facility. Even some members of the Volkswagen board have chastised the company for doing business in a region known for slave labor, even if company reps are sincerely convinced none of their own employees are working under duress.
The Volkswagen-SAIC factory in Xinjiang was the first site to manufacture passenger vehicles in sparsely developed northwestern China. At its peak, it was producing 20,000 cars per year. Production dwindled amid the drumbeat of human rights criticism until Volkswagen announced in March 2023 that the Urumqi plant no longer makes cars at all, but, instead, performs quality-assurance checks for about 10,000 cars per year assembled in other parts of China.
The workforce has been reduced by about two-thirds since the beginning of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, and Volkswagen executives say they are reluctant to wipe out the remaining jobs by closing the plant entirely. The German company also says its Chinese partners at SAIC have to sign off on any dramatic changes to plant operations.
Demonstrators gathered at Volkswagen’s shareholder meeting on Wednesday were strongly critical of the company’s stance on Xinjiang, as reported by Radio Free Asia (RFA):
Outside the hall, activists wore a big-headed mask of Xi and a flat paper mask of Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume, who stood arm-in-arm. The Xi figure held a metal ring attached to a chain leading to two handcuffed people representing Uyghur workers in blue laborer uniforms.
Standing behind them, activists with the World Uyghur Congress held up big signs saying, “Camps, forced labor, family separations: VW major shareholders in Lower Saxony must not remain silent about crimes against Uyghurs,” a reference to the location of Volkswagen’s headquarters.
“Genocide of Uyghurs! VW has to withdraw from East Turkistan!” said another sign, a reference to the name Uyghurs call their homeland in modern-day Xinjiang.
Things were even more lively inside the exhibit hall, where a topless woman waved a banner calling for an end to Uyghur forced labor, and someone heaved pieces of cake at Volkswagen executives while they were speaking at the podium:
According to Reuters reporters who managed to follow the trajectory of the cake, it was directed at Porsche SE chairman Wolfgang Porsche, but the pastry projectile broke up in mid-flight, and some of it flew at Volkswagen Supervisory Board chairman Hans Dieter Poetsch. Reuters said the affiliation of the cake thrower was “unclear.”
The protest was also attended by climate activists, who accused Volkswagen of not doing enough to reduce carbon emissions. Some of them tried to glue themselves to the sidewalk outside the meeting, but police stopped them.
Gheyyur Qurban, Berlin director for the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), read a statement at the meeting, which accused Volkswagen of setting up shop in the middle of a “dystopia.” Qurban noted Volkswagen is the only car manufacturer in the world with manufacturing facilities in Xinjiang and repeated the accusation that keeping the plant free of forced labor is all but impossible because the Chinese Communist Party keeps such an iron grip on the region.
Another statement made by Hanno Schedler of the Society for Threatened Peoples said:
Today we are here to show Volkswagen, but also the German public, that it is important that a company like Volkswagen with its heavy involvement, its heavy engagement in China and into East Turkistan, Xinjiang, has a special responsibility to fight against genocide, to fight against family separations, to fight against the sterilization, the forced sterilization of women, and to fight against forced labor.
Volkswagen investors voiced their own concerns on Wednesday about the Xinjiang operation and called for an independent audit of the facility. They also called on Volkswagen to redouble its efforts to capture Chinese market share.
“For VW it is now a question of remaining relevant in the world’s largest car market – or being satisfied with being a niche supplier,” according to ESG supervisor Janne Werning of Union Investment.