Japanese clothing giant Uniqlo, embroiled in controversy last year for refusing to stop buying cotton from China’s slave fields in Xinjiang province, on Monday refused to close its stores in Russia as other fashion houses have done.
Humanitarian activists and U.N. officials are calling for sanctions against the Taliban to be eased so aid can be rendered to the sick, starving, and soon-to-be freezing Afghan people – but Radio Free Europe (RFE) on Tuesday documented how the Taliban is looting aid programs to pay its officials, and even withholding food to force Afghan civilians into slavery.
China offered increased “law enforcement and security” support for Kazakhstan on Sunday, to help it suppress the remainder of the protest movement that broke out on January 1 and was brutally crushed with Russian military assistance over the weekend.
Walmart’s big-box discount store Sam’s Club held a conference call on Wednesday in which it denied pulling products from its shelves because they were sourced to Xinjiang, where the oppressed Muslim Uyghurs are sold as slaves by the Chinese Communist regime.
An activist group called the Coalition to End Forced Labor in the Uyghur Region on Tuesday charged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) with refusing to answer if slaves are making its merchandise for the Beijing Winter Games.
China’s state-run Global Times on Friday denounced the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act as an act of “blasphemy against real democracy, human rights, and free trade.”
The Senate on Thursday passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act by unanimous consent, sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk for signature.
According to an investigation published by Axios on Tuesday, top Olympic sponsor Airbnb offers over a dozen homes for rent in the Xinjiang region of China, home of the oppressed Uyghur Muslims – many of whom have been forced from their own homes into concentration camps and sold to both Chinese and foreign corporations as slaves.
U.S. President Joe Biden cannot entirely refute allegations that his government released a group of migrant children to labor traffickers.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the UK Guardian, and a non-profit group called the Investigative Reporting Project Italy published a joint investigation on Friday that found several large grocery store chains have been selling tomato products allegedly made with forced labor from the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang province.
A bipartisan congressional panel on Tuesday criticized brands such as Coca-Cola, Visa, Intel, Airbnb, and Procter & Gamble for sponsoring the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics despite China’s human rights violations, including the genocide of Uyghur Muslims.
France is investgating four fashion companies for the alleged use of slave labour in the Xinjiang region of China.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Wednesday banned the import of solar panel materials from Hoshine Silicon Industry, a Chinese company accused of enslaving Uyghur Muslims.
The top three victims exploited by prosecuted human traffickers last year were drug addicts, runaways, and illegal aliens.
EU leaders reportedly blocked attempts from the UlS., Britain, and Canada to call out the China for the use of slave labour in Xinjiang.
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an international organization headquartered in Germany, on Tuesday released the 2020 edition of its annual Human Rights Report. The WUC described its report as “a detailed review of China’s egregious crimes against the Uyghurs and other Turkic people.”
The Chinese government on Wednesday denounced U.S. Customs officials for blocking a shipment of shirts from Japanese casual wear designer Uniqlo because they violated a ban on slave-picked cotton in China’s Xinjiang province.
A massive backlash against Coca-Cola was sparked after the Georgia-based CEO, James Quincey, said the recently-passed Georgia voting laws.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) renewed its sharp-power attack on Swedish apparel firm H&M on Wednesday after the clothier restated its vow to avoid using cotton harvested with forced labor by the oppressed Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang province.
China’s latest exercise of “sharp power” – using economic leverage to impose its political agenda on the free world – targets H&M, a Swedish fashion company. The clothing company was surprised to find itself threatened with boycotts and banned by major Chinese e-commerce platforms Wednesday over months-old social media posts expressing concern about China’s use of Uyghur Muslim slave labor in Xinjiang province.
The Home Office has reported more than 10,000 suspected cases of modern slavery in the UK last year, though the effects of lockdown mean that the figure could be even higher.
The BBC on Tuesday reported on a “high-level Chinese study,” meant for top Chinese Communist Party officials only but accidentally leaked online, that outlined a plan to crush the Uyghur people of Xinjiang province by dispersing their population across China’s vast land mass, making it difficult for them to raise families and pass along their traditions.
Chinese state media continued its efforts to deflect criticism of human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslims of Xinjiang province on Wednesday, as the state-run Xinhua news service wrote a furious editorial denouncing all accounts of oppression against the Uyghurs as a “string of lies” fabricated by “anti-China forces in the West.”
A record number of human trafficking victims sought help from a Finland Centre tackling the issue in 2020.
China’s state-run Global Times on Thursday warned President Joe Biden that America is “doomed” unless he adopts policies friendlier to China’s interests than his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump.
Evidence points to the CCP committing crimes “indicative of genocide” in Xinjiang, the UK’s Conservative Party Human Rights Commission said.
The British government sent nearly £150 million to firms connected to the concentration camp regime in the Chinese region of Xinjiang for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the coronavirus outbreak in the UK.
The EU’s investment pact with the China has been characterised as a “real setback for the free world” by the founder of Hong Kong Watch
An investigation made public Tuesday by a human rights group called the Tech Transparency Project accused Lens Technology, a major Apple supplier in China that also does business with Amazon and Tesla, of using forced labor from Uyghur Muslims the Chinese government herded into concentration camps.
Allegations of forced labor at Volkswagen’s car plant in China’s Xinjiang region are untrue, the German car manufacturer’s CEO in China told the BBC on Thursday.
Video filmed secretly inside China and uploaded to YouTube over the past month documented about 20,000 concentration camp victims shuttled to textile factories and forced to work 12 hours a day, every day of the week.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a notice on Tuesday that accused a Chinese company of using “convict, forced, or indentured labor” to manufacture products that could be exported to the United States. The company in questioned is directly owned by the Chinese government.
Stephen Lamar, head of the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), told a session of the U.S. House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade on Thursday that import bans on products from China’s Xinjiang province could “wreak havoc” on supply chains.
Human-rights watchdog Bitter Winter published an interview Sunday with a garment factory manager in China’s Xinjiang province who said the thousand or so Uyghur Muslims who work for his operation are used as slave laborers, despite the regime’s assurances that work programs in the province are a benefit to local participants.
A report published by the New York Times (NYT) on Sunday revealed that forced labor from the Uyghur concentration camps of Xinjiang province is part of the production chain for at least 17 Chinese companies that produce medical masks and other protective equipment.
British supermarket chain Tesco has suspended production at a factory in China after a letter from alleged slave labourers was discovered in a box of charity Christmas cards. Tesco has come under fire after a six-year-old girl in London, Florence
Thursday was the 74th annual Liberation Day in South Korea, commemorating the end of Japanese occupation after World War Two, featured demonstrations denouncing both Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries.
Africa currently has the highest prevalency of modern-day slavery, four hundred years since the transaltantic slave trade began during the 15th century.
Thousands filled the streets of Seoul on Saturday night, carrying candles and signs of protest against Japan’s tighter trade restrictions on South Korea. More marches and rallies are planned every weekend as Liberation Day, the holiday commemorating the end of Japanese occupation in 1945, approaches on August 15.
Thousands of South Koreans rallied in Seoul on Saturday night, carrying banners that read “No Abe!” and “Apologize for forced labor!”
