On the evening of 12 June 2013, according to court documents, three “Chinese intruders” were arrested by the Indian army in Sultan Chusku, a remote and uninhabited desert area in the mountainous northern region of Ladakh. The three Thursun brothers – Adil, 23, Abdul Khaliq, 22 and Salamu, 20 – had found themselves in an area of unmarked and disputed borders after a 13-day journey by bus and foot over the rugged Himalayan terrain through China’s Xinjiang province, which borders Ladakh. The men told army officials that they had fled…
Tag: Xinjiang
‘They told me not to speak out’: the woman who took on China – and won her husband’s freedom
Zeynure Hasan was at home in Istanbul in July 2021 when her husband finally called. It had been four days since she last heard from him as he got ready to board a flight to Casablanca. The silence had been torturous. But the news Idris now shared with her was even worse. He had been arrested and imprisoned on arrival in Morocco and told he was going to be deported to China. “You should call anyone who can help me, anyone who can rescue me,” he told her, before the…
Kmart supply chains under scrutiny for potential Uyghur forced labour links in Australian court case
The letter was effusively polite, the allegations anything but. “We have the honour to address you,” the seven United Nations special rapporteurs began their correspondence to the head of Jiangsu Guotai Guosheng garment factory in China’s Xinjiang province. The 2021 letter then detailed allegations of brutal working conditions for members of China’s Uyghur minority, reportedly forcibly transported hundreds of kilometres and arbitrarily detained for re-education and forced labour. “Workers are reportedly required to work in fenced-in factories … allegedly exposed to intimidation, coercion, threats, and restriction on their freedom of…
Ed Miliband bows to pressure with ban on solar panels linked to Chinese slavery
Ed Miliband will ban the UK’s national energy company from investing in projects that use solar panels linked to Chinese slave labour after bowing to pressure from Labour and Conservative MPs. The energy secretary has dropped his previous resistance to rewriting the bill establishing Great British Energy and will now introduce an amendment that forces the company to make sure there is no slavery or human trafficking in its supply chain. The decision, which was first reported by the Times, was welcomed by MPs and campaigners seeking to highlight Chinese…
Uyghur rights group calls on hotel chains not to ‘sanitise’ China abuses in Xinjiang
Almost 200 international hotels are operating or planning to open in Xinjiang, despite calls from human rights groups for global corporations not to help “sanitise” the Chinese government’s human rights abuses in the region, a report has said. The report by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) identified 115 operational hotels which the organisation said “benefit from a presence in the Uyghur region”. At least another 74 were in various stages of construction or planning, the report said. The UHRP said some of the hotels also had exposure or links…
German firm BASF to pull out of Xinjiang after Uyghur abuse claims
The German chemicals producer BASF has said it will withdraw from its two joint ventures in Xinjiang, after media reports about alleged human rights abuses relating to its partner company, which BASF’s CEO said crossed a red line. In a statement on Friday, BASF said that while “regular due diligence measures including internal and external audits have not found any evidence of human rights violations in the two joint ventures”, the recent reports “indicate activities inconsistent with BASF’s values”. On Monday, a group of politicians from around the world urged…
German firm BASF urged to quit Xinjiang over ‘gross abuses’ of Uyghurs
The German chemicals producer BASF “appears to be implicated in gross abuses” of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and should withdraw from the Chinese province, a group of politicians from around the world have said. The group made the allegation in a letter to BASF’s chair, Martin Brudermüller, on Monday, after the German media outlets Der Spiegel and ZDF published a joint investigation on Friday. The investigation found that in 2018 and 2019 people employed by BASF’s Chinese partner company, Xinjiang Markor Chemical Industry, in Xinjiang accompanied Chinese state officials on home…
Elderly Uyghur women imprisoned in China for decades-old religious ‘crimes’, leaked files reveal
Hundreds of thousands of Uyghur female religious leaders are estimated to have been arrested and imprisoned in Xinjiang since 2014, with some elderly women detained for practices that took place decades ago, according to an analysis of leaked Chinese police files. There is growing evidence of the abusive treatment of the Uyghur Muslim population of the north-west Chinese region of Xinjiang, with their traditions and religion seen as evidence of extremism and separatism. New analysis of leaked police files found more than 400 women – some more than 80 years…
Carmakers may be using aluminium made by Uyghur forced labour, NGO investigation finds
Car manufacturers Toyota, Volkswagen, Tesla, General Motors and BYD may be using aluminium made by Uyghur forced labour in their supply chains and could do more to minimise that risk, Human Rights Watch says. An investigation conducted by HRW has alleged that while most automotive companies have strict human rights standards to audit their global supply chains, they may not be applying the same rigorous sourcing rules for their operations inside China. This includes joint venture companies inside China that make models for foreign brands for just the local market…
Thermo Fisher stops sale of DNA kits in Tibet after activists raised fears of rights abuses
The US biotech company Thermo Fisher has halted sales of its DNA identification kits in Tibet, nearly five years after it made a similar commitment about the sale of its products in the neighbouring western Chinese region of Xinjiang. It decided to stop sales in Tibet after months of complaints from rights groups and investors that the technology may be used in a way that abuses human rights. The company said that the decision was made in the middle of 2023, but it was only revealed to investors late last…