
'Virtually entire' fashion industry complicit in Uighur forced labour - laurex
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/jul/23/virtually-entire-fashion-industry-complicit-in-uighur-forced-labour-say-rights-groups-china
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mytailorisrich
I have a feeling that they are conflating cotton from Xinjiang and forced
labour... Convenient.

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DanBC
It's not a conflation, it's a direct claim.

> Despite these abuses, the coalition of human rights groups says many of the
> world’s leading clothing brands continue to source cotton and yarn produced
> through a vast state-sponsored system of forced labour involving up to 1.8m
> Uighur and other Turkic and Muslim people in prison camps, factories and
> farms in Xinjiang. It says that the forced labour system across the region
> is the largest internment of an ethnic and religious minority since the
> second world war.

Are they wrong?

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mytailorisrich
The question is: Are they right?

They are making a claim. It's for them to prove it, not for others to disprove
it.

The article says that China is the largest cotton producer and that most of
Chinese cotton is produced in Xinjiang. So it is very easy to claim that
something might be happening in Xinjiang and then say that the entire fashion
industry is "complicit".

But from the article it seems to me that this is based on second hand accounts
reported through the blob of "a coalition" from people who have an interest in
attacking China and in making their previous situation in China as bad as
possible.

They are also mentioning the "Uyghur Human Rights Project". I don't know who
they are but their website says that they are based in Washington DC (and they
seem to a separatist group that seeks independence for Xinjiang). With the
current situation between China and the US, forgive me for thinking that
maybe, just maybe, this might be a PR machine in operation (basically psych
ops).

Whether these claims are in fact true or not, it seems to me that the media
are too happy to take everything at face value.

