A new report released by the Centre for Global Policy on 15 December suggests that over half a million people from ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang are being forced to pick cotton. This comes after the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said that it will not investigate China for alleged genocide and crimes against humanity.
Forced Labour
The Xinjiang region is known to be the location of internment camps where over a million Uyghur Muslims are reportedly detained, in what China calls “re-education camps” to combat extremist terrorism. The latest report alleging the forced cotton picking is one more addition to the long list of supposed human rights abuses, including torture, forced sterilisation, and forcing Uyghurs to become foriegn spies. China denies all such claims, insisting the camps are “educational and vocational facilities”, and the factories are part of a “poverty alleviation” scheme.
Xinjiang produces 85% of China’s cotton, and 20% of the world’s cotton, but the Centre for Global Policy’s report suggests there is significant evidence that it is “tainted” by the forced labour of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim minorities. The report, titled “Coercive Labor in Xinjiang: Labor Transfer and the Mobilization of Ethnic Minorities to Pick Cotton” is written by Adrian Zenz, an independent researcher specialising in Xinjiang and Tibet. It analysed government documents and state media reports, finding that hundreds of thousands of forced labourers are picking cotton by hand as part of a “coercive state-mandated labour transfer and poverty alleviation scheme.” There has been specific coercion related to cotton picking, as previously evidence of forced labour concentrated on manufacturing and the production of textiles and apparel.
“The evidence shows that in 2018, three Uyghur regions alone mobilized at least 570,000 persons into cotton-picking operations through the government’s coercive labor training and transfer scheme. Xinjiang’s total labor transfer of ethnic minorities into cotton picking likely exceeds that figure by several hundred thousand,” the report finds.
Around 70% of Xinjiang’s cotton fields have to be picked by hand, thus the increase in local ethnic minority cotton pickers, reducing the numbers of Han Chinese migrant labourers. It is also designed to boost rural incomes and achieve “poverty alleviation targets”, but this relies on coercive labour transfers. This involves “coercive mobilisation through local work teams, transfers of pickers in tightly supervised groups, and intrusive on-site surveillance by government officials and (in at least some cases) police officers.” Pickers are monitored by government supervision teams, checking if they have a “stable state of mind”, and also allegedly administer “political indoctrination sessions.” As cotton picking is poorly paid and intensive work, the report finds that, in some regions elderly Uyghurs and children are put into centralised care whilst working-age adults are sent on “state-assigned cotton picking assignments.”
Whilst the majority of people are those who haven’t been detained in the internment camps, the labour transfers do include people who have been released from them. The policies are targeted at Xinjiang’s Uyghur and Muslim minority populations, as evidenced in the report with references to “guiding” those picking cotton to “consciously resist illegal religious activities” found in government publications. The BBC also released new research based on documents and footage. Titled “China’s ‘tainted’ cotton”, the BBC attempted to investigate factories in the region. Showing satellite footage of buildings, independent analysts confirmed masses of people wearing the same colour uniform can be seen walking between different sites with “re-education” camps and factories. The author of the report, John Sudworth, said that when the BBC tried to visit they were followed by a number of unmarked cars whilst they filmed the parameter of the complexes, where factories and camps appear to be amalgamated into one large factory complex.
Many worldwide brands have faced criticism for sourcing their production or materials from Xijiang despite claims of forced labour. The Centre for Global Policy report has implications for the fashion industry and global supply chains. The BBC asked 30 major international brands if they intend to continue sourcing products from China in light of the findings, and only four – Marks & Spencer, Next, Burberry and Tesco – said they had a strict policy of demanding anything sourced from China does not use cotton from Xijiang. The Better Cotton Initiative told the BBC that they have recently decided to stop auditing and certifying farms in Xinjiang over concerns of the “poverty alleviation scheme”.
Uyghur pleas rejected
According to a report released on 14 December, ICC said they will not investigate China for alleged genocide and crimes against humanity. This is despite many calls and pleased to do so, with the Uyghur community pushing for the investigation and providing The Hague with evidence for court in July that supports the prosecution of China for human rights abuses. The office of prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said it was unable to investigate as the alleged crimes that happened inside of China, which is outside ICC jurisdiction.
“This precondition for the exercise of the court’s territorial jurisdiction did not appear to be met with respect to the majority of the crimes alleged,” Bensouda’s report said.
In November, a group of 63 parliamentarians from around the world signed a letter to the ICC to accept the complaint on alleged genoicde and crimes against humanity by China. As part of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China and representing 14 countries, the group urged the ICC to look into forced deportations of Uyghurs from Cambodia and Tajikistan, both of which are signatories of the ICC and therefore within the court’s jurisdiction. However, the ICC found “no basis to proceed” on reports of mass deportations occurring in Cambodia and Tajikistan.