China: Mounting evidence suggests system of forced labour emerging from camps for ethnic minorities
"Chinaโs Detention Camps for Muslims Turn to Forced Labor", 16 Dec 2018
โฆChinaโs ruling Communist Party has saidโฆthat a sprawling network of camps in the Xinjiang region is providing job training and putting detainees on production lines for their own good, offering an escape from poverty, backwardness and the temptations of radical Islam.
But mounting evidence suggests a system of forced labor is emerging from the campsโฆAccounts from the region, satellite images and previously unreported official documents indicate that growing numbers of detainees are being sent to new factories, built inside or near the camps, where inmates have little choice but to accept jobs and follow orders.
โThese people who are detained provide free or low-cost forced labor for these factories,โ said Mehmet Volkan Kasikci, a researcher in Turkey who has collected accounts of inmates in the factories by interviewing relatives who have left Chinaโฆ
โฆSerikzhan Bilash, a founder of Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights, an organization in Kazakhstan that helps ethnic Kazakhs who have left neighboring Xinjiang, said he had interviewed relatives of 10 inmates who had told their families that they were made to work in factories after undergoing indoctrination in the camps. They mostly made clothes, and they called their employers โblack factories,โ because of the low wages and tough conditions, he saidโฆ