In an effort to eliminate goods made with Uyghur forced labor, the US State Department added three more Chinese companies to the list of those facing import restrictions for goods coming into the U.S. This brings the total number of companies on the list to 27.
The legal backing for these restrictions falls under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List (UFLPA) which bans the importation of goods into the United States that were produced by companies based in the Uyghur region or identified as having connections to production to it.
Unless the importers on the list can prove the goods they are shipping were not produced with forced labor, they are banned from bringing their products into U.S. markets.
In another welcome move, as part of the same package the State Department issued an addendum to its business advisory on Uyghur region supply chains, citing China’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and the evidence of widespread use of forced labor there.”
Numerous reports from both governmental and non-governmental sources point to the ongoing, widespread, and pervasive risk of forced labor in any supply chain connected to Uyghur region.
Investigations and personal accounts have established that the Chinese government has labor camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in the region where inmates are forced to work, from harvesting cotton, to mining, to manufacturing.
The three companies recently added were found by the U.S. to be working with the government of Xinjiang to recruit and transport, harbor or use the forced labor of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, or members of other persecuted groups out of the region.
The U.S. State Department stressed the urgency for businesses to be proactive on forced labor in their supply chains and take due diligence measures into their own hands. This includes identifying, assessing and acting on forced labor and human rights risks for workers on an ongoing basis.
The UFLPA and import restrictions are a great next step towards ending Uyghur forced labor, but this isn’t a one-and-done problem. Over 20 percent of the global apparel’s cotton supply is grown in Uyghur Region, with 84 percent of China’s supply grown in the province. Recent reports implicate at least 83 companies as profiting from the use of forced labor and as seen by this article, the list just keeps growing.
Freedom United says we need to keep the momentum going and apply pressure from multiple directions to have the Chinese government disband the camps and stop the forced labor and human rights abuses currently taking place in the Uyghur region.
