Xinjiang cotton: why it is so hard to find out the truth about forced labour claims

International pressure against China over its Xinjiang policies has gained traction in recent months, with China criticised over the treatment of Uygur Muslims in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. China has denied allegations of forced labour and detention. We look at the issues in this series. China has become increasingly forceful in its defence of what state media calls the “pure, white and flawless” cotton produced in its far western region of Xinjiang amid a growing international storm about forced labour. It is the latest in a series of alleged human rights abuses against Uygurs and other Muslim minority groups in the region – charges Beijing has vehemently denied, insisting they are lies manufactured by anti-China forces. The issue has become yet another flashpoint between China and the United States and on Saturday President Joe Biden urged the other Group of Seven countries to put more pressure on Beijing over the issue. China has defended its policies as helping to develop the region’s economy and highlighted what it says are flaws and inconsistencies in the testimonies given by former Xinjiang residents. It has also hit back against the Better Cotton Initiative, an industry certification group, after it emerged that it had stopped all field-level activities in Xinjiang last year, citing “sustained allegations of forced labour and other human rights abuses” that had “contributed to an increasingly untenable operating environment”. Although the group deleted all references to forced labour from its website in the ensuing backlash, Beijing has challenged the Geneva-based group to prove its allegations. But forced labour is notoriously challenging to document, and specialists in the field warn that the political dimensions to the case make it less likely that Beijing will heed calls for greater transparency. Investigators with the International Labour Organization said unfettered on-the-ground access to sites and workers who could speak without fear of punishment was essential to verify such allegations. Jenny Chan, an academic at Hong Kong Polytechnic University who has previously documented the struggles of Chinese migrant workers and mistreatment of student interns at Foxconn plants in mainland China, said: “In the absence of authoritative fact-finding investigations, the agenda on Xinjiang’s forced labour has become so polarised that there is little room for rational discussion. “But ensuring supply chain transparency and social and labour responsibility is critical.” Xinjiang: will the West’s sanctions on China force the issue or unravel? Jeroen Beirnaert, director of human and trade union rights with the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation, said there was a “hopeless deadlock” over Xinjiang. “The language being used by both sides shows minimal trust, nor is there any willingness for the Chinese government to engage with [the international community] for a solution,” Beirnaert said. “We fear measures from both sides will not help to solve the problems Uygur workers face in the region. I hope there will be positive changes to move things forward but I have seen no sign of hope so far, at least not in the short term.” The International Labour Organization defines forced labour as “work or service that is performed involuntarily and under the menace of any penalty”. One of its two core conventions, No 105, deals with forced labour imposed by the state and prohibits its use as a means of political coercion, as a way of mobilising workers for the purposes of economic development, as means of labour discipline, as a punishment for going on strike or as a means of discrimination on grounds such as race and religion. The ILO has recently investigated some high-profile claims of forced labour, including those involving migrant workers building stadiums for the 2022 Fifa World Cup, after which they reached an agreement with Qatar to align its laws with international standards. But specialists in the field said the case of Xinjiang presented an “unprecedented” political challenge for investigators, citing severe levels of surveillance and repression in the region. Jason Judd, the former head of the ILO Ship to Shore Rights Project that investigated the Thai fishing industry, said the political risks and the difficulty of getting workers to speak without fear would be his biggest concerns if he was asked to investigate Xinjiang. “It’s practically impossible if you are not face-to-face with the workers, especially when the coercion and involuntariness is more subtle,” Judd, who now teaches at Cornell University, said. “It’s not just a matter of conversation, sometimes workers won’t share with you what’s happening without trust or feeling safe to give answers. And that’s why state-sponsored allegations are much harder to work on.” He said one of the biggest challenges when investigating accusations of forced labour in the Thai fishing industry came in finding a safe place to speak to workers who were isolated for days, if not weeks, at sea. Better Cotton Initiative faces fresh criticism in China “Without meaningful unfettered access to workers, I don’t know how you’d do it. How do you find a worker who is not feeling the pressure and willing to talk about what is really happening there? “It’s like finding a potential juror who hasn’t heard about the George Floyd case,” Judd said citing the murder of the 46-year-old African-American by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin last May. Independent investigators have repeatedly urged China to allow them unfettered access to the region to investigate the accusations. Meanwhile, the United Nations working group on business and human rights, which first asked to visit China in October 2017, has yet to receive a positive response. Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has also failed to get permission to visit China, and requests by the European Union to give its ambassadors unrestricted access to Xinjiang have not succeeded. Without direct access, researchers in the West have used open-sourced and non-public Chinese government documents, academic sources, state media reports, and satellite images as well as interviews with former detainees in the so-called re-education camps to build up a case that Uygurs and other minority groups are being mistreated. Last year, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute published a report that calculated more than 80,000 Uygurs, some straight out of detention camps, had been transferred to work in factories elsewhere in China between 2017-2019. China has strongly denied the claims. This month Xinjiang government spokesman Xu Guixiang told reporters that 90 per cent of the 380 structures in Xinjiang identified by the Canberra-based ASPI research institute as internment facilities were incorrectly labelled. State media has also promoted the narrative that the cotton industry, which employs around 1.6 million rural labourers in Xinjiang, is a vital source of income for some of the country’s poorest households. In December, a report on the state-run news website Tianshannet said that in one southern prefecture, Aksu, 130,000 low-income rural residents were being “coordinated and distributed” to pick cotton as part of efforts to improve residents’ livelihoods and cover labour shortages. Opportunity knocks for Xinjiang’s ‘fourteenth ethnicity’, but at a price The report said that one woman from Uqturpan county had made over 10,000 yuan (US$1,500) in two months by picking over 5,000kg (2,200 lbs) of cotton. It also said that in another county, Awat, workers had been provided with food, lodging and transport to the fields, while “ideological education has been stepped up” to better understand their well-being and family situation. China produces 22 per cent of the world’s cotton, 84 per cent of which comes from Xinjiang, according to a report by the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies. In the wake of the Better Cotton Initiative row, a number of international fashion brands have announced they will no longer use cotton from the region, and the US has banned the import of raw cotton and said importers must prove their products were not tainted by forced labour. The measures triggered a furious backlash in China, including online campaigns to boycott the brands involved and a number of celebrities publicly cutting their ties with Western firms. Meanwhile, the Chinese government responded to sanctions on officials accused of human rights abuses in the region with retaliatory measures targeting politicians, academics, government bodies and think tanks. However, some observers fear that sanctions on Xinjiang cotton products will only end up harming rural labourers. Surya Deva, associate professor of law at City University of Hong Kong and vice-chairman of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights, reiterated the pleas for China to allow independent experts to go on a fact-finding trip, but also called for an end to the politicisation of the issue. “There’s no end to these competing narratives and people will continue to suffer on the ground. All parties agree that there should be no forced labour. So this is a question of fact. There are ILO indicators to determine what amounts to forced labour and that can be investigated by independent experts who can be trusted by all sides,” Deva said. British parliament declares Uygurs are suffering ‘genocide’ in Xinjiang “There’s nothing political for us. We accept that different countries may do things differently when pursuing a development pathway, and we understand these nuances. But when it comes to international human rights, there are commonly accepted standards that must be respected by all states.” Aidan McQuade, a former director of Anti-Slavery International and now an independent consultant on slavery and forced labour matters, said China should ratify the 2014 ILO protocol that strengthened existing mechanisms to tackle the problem and introduced greater international scrutiny of how well countries were responding. He said investigations were “never straightforward”, and were “much more difficult when you’re talking about state-sponsored accusations”, but greater transparency from China would help its international reputation and ability to trade freely in the global market. “Given the level of allegations coming from credible sources, anybody who is sourcing commercially from Xinjiang is going to have not just moral but commercial concerns,” McQuade said. “I don’t think that the level of independent scrutiny and response to the issue from the Chinese state is sufficient to reassure anybody.”