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Article

18 Dec 2018

Author:
Dake Kang, Martha Mendoza & Yanan Wang, Associated Press

Shipments to Badger Sport traced to Chinese internment camp where detainees are allegedly subject to forced labour

"In locked compound, minorities in China make clothes for US", 18 December 2018

...The Associated Press has tracked recent, ongoing shipments from... [a] factory inside an internment camp to Badger Sportswear, a leading supplier in Statesville, North Carolina...

Chinese authorities say the camps, which they call training centers, offer free vocational training for Uighurs, Kazakhs and others, mostly Muslims, as part of a plan to bring minorities into “a modern civilized” world and eliminate poverty in Xinjiang...

However, a dozen people who either had been in a camp or had friends or family in one told the AP that detainees they knew were given no choice but to work at the factories....Payment varied according to the factory. Some got paid nothing...

Men and women in the complex that has shipped products to Badger Sportswear make clothes for privately-owned Hetian Taida Apparel in a cluster of 10 workshops within the compound walls. Hetian Taida says it is not affiliated with the internment camps, but its workforce includes detainees...

Badger chief executive Anton said... his company has sourced products from an affiliate of Hetian Taida for many years... “We will voluntarily halt sourcing and will move production elsewhere while we investigate the matters raised,” he said...

It’s unclear whether other companies also export products made by forced labor in Xinjiang to the U.S., Europe and Asia. The AP found two companies exporting to the U.S. that share approximately the same coordinates as places experts have identified as internment camps... But the AP could not confirm whether the companies use forced labor...

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