Half a million Muslims forced to pick cotton as scale of Chinese slave labour exposed
“China is forcing hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other minorities to pick cotton by hand in the western region of Xinjiang, a key source of the world’s cotton, according to a report by a Washington-based think tank.
Rights activists have estimated that Chinese authorities have detained more than one million Uighurs and other, mostly Muslim, minorities in detention camps in Xinjiang since 2017. Beijing denies that Uighurs’ rights are abused and says re-education centres provide vocational training to help people gain employment, and are necessary to curb extremism.
Now, information from Chinese government documents and state media reports provides evidence that at least half a million people have been forced to pick cotton through a coercive state-mandated labour transfer and poverty alleviation scheme, the Center for Global Policy says.”