Big name brands accused of using Uygur ‘forced labour’ by Australian think tank

Google, Microsoft, Siemens, Sony and Adidas are among the 83 global brands named by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in its report

Some workers are thought to have been sourced from Xinjiang’s controversial re-education camps that Beijing calls ‘vocational training centres’

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Uygurs wearing face masks pictured outside a railway station in Guangzhou last month. Photo: EPA

Published: 7:00pm, 2 Mar 2020Updated: 8:06pm, 2 Mar 2020

More than 80,000 Uygurs have been moved from the far-western Xinjiang region to work in factories around China that supply dozens of household brands such as Apple, Nike, Huawei and Samsung, a report by an Australia-based security think tank has found.

Under a programme known as “Xinjiang aid,” the Chinese government between 2017 and 2019 facilitated the mass transfer of Uygurs to work “under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour”, sometimes drawing labourers directly from re-education camps that have drawn widespread international condemnation, according to the report released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) on Sunday.

The report said the work programme represents a “new phase in China’s social re-engineering campaign targeting minority citizens” following the announcement late last year that all those in Xinjiang’s so-called vocational training centres had “graduated” and taken up employment.

The United Nations has estimated that up to 1 million Uygur and other Muslim minority citizens are being arbitrarily detained in the camps, which Beijing insists are necessary to combat terrorism and radicalisation.

A guard tower and barbed wire fences are seen surrounding one of Xinjiang’s ‘vocational training centre’ in 2018. Photo: AP

“In factories far away from home, they typically live in segregated dormitories, undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours, are subject to constant surveillance, and are forbidden from participating in religious observances,” said the report, which is based on open-source documents, satellite pictures, academic research and on-the-ground reporting.

Big name brands accused of using Uygur ‘forced labour’ by Australian think tank

Google, Microsoft, Siemens, Sony and Adidas are among the 83 global brands named by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in its report Some workers are thought to have been sourced from Xinjiang’s controversial re-education camps that Beijing calls ‘vocational training centres’

Google, Microsoft, Siemens, Sony and Adidas are among the 83 global brands named by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in its report

Some workers are thought to have been sourced from Xinjiang’s controversial re-education camps that Beijing calls ‘vocational training centres’