China is forcing Uighur detainees to work in factories supplying major global brands including Nike and Apple.
At least 80,000 Uighurs have been transferred to work at factories far away from their home province of Xinjiang, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute concluded in a study released on Saturday.
The Chinese government has instituted a mass detention and surveillance apparatus meant to “Sinicize” the Muslim Turkic minority, and the ASPI reported that the transfer of Uighur workers strongly indicates the existence of a forced labor system.
“The Chinese government is now exporting the punitive culture and ethos of Xinjiang’s ‘reeducation camps’ to factories across China,” wrote Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, the lead author of the study.
Some of those workers were brought to one of the largest factories in Nike’s supply chain, Qingdao Taekwang Shoes Co., in Laixi near China’s coast.
“Everyone knows they didn’t come here of their own free will. They were brought here,” a fruit vendor in the city told the Washington Post. Another vendor stated, “The Uighurs had to come because they didn’t have an option. The government sent them here.”
“We can walk around, but we can’t go back [to Xinjiang] on our own,” a Uighur woman told the Post.
Other factories employing Uighur labor are part of supply chains for Apple, Dell, Volkswagen, Microsoft, and numerous clothing outlets including Abercrombie and Fitch, Victoria’s Secret, and the Gap.
“Apple is dedicated to ensuring that everyone in our supply chain is treated with the dignity and respect they deserve,” company spokesman Josh Rosenstock said. “We have not seen this report but we work closely with all our suppliers to ensure our high standards are upheld.”
“We are committed to upholding international labor standards globally,” Nike spokeswoman Sandra Carreon-John said. Suppliers are “strictly prohibited from using any type of prison, forced, bonded or indentured labor.”
Editors Note: Abercrombie and Fitch claims that the company did not work with two of the three supply-chain factories cited in the ASPI report as possibly connected to the company, and that in 2019 it decided to cease working with the third supplier beginning in 2020 after a regular review of the company’s supply chain.