This Friday, the United States government restricted the import of products from 29 companies chinas whom he accuses of labor exploitation in the Xinjiang region.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported the inclusion of these companies, which include distributors of agricultural products and household appliances, to a list of entities associated with the forced labor of people from the Uyghur Muslim minority.
“Labor exploitation is a violation of basic human rights,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in a statement.
The United States has already included more than 100 Chinese companies to the list of companies that it accuses of labor exploitation in the Xinjiang region and instructs customs authorities to prohibit their entry into the country.
The rule will go into effect on November 25. “Businesses should not secure unfair advantages by exploiting workers,” said US Trade Representative Katherine Tai. “We will enforce our laws to address forced labor and “Prevent companies that violate workers’ rights from benefiting from the US market.”he added in a statement. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Law was enacted in 2021.
In 2021, the United States and other partners denounced the UN Chinese government abuses against Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang, raising pressure against Beijing, which always denied all accusations and described them as a pretext to try to harm it.
Xinjiang produces approximately 20% of the world’s cotton and, according to the complainants, the cultivation and harvesting work is carried out in part thanks to the forced labor to which they are subjected by the Chinese authorities. more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in a network of detention centers.
In 2022, the UN Human Rights Office, directed at that time by Chilean Michelle Bachelet, issued a report on human rights in China, focused on documented information about serious and systematic violations against the Uyghurs, which was repudiated by Beijing.
Last June, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that China systematically renamed hundreds of towns in the Xinjiang region with religious, historical or cultural significance for the Uyghur Muslim minority. to others that reflect the ideology of the Communist Party of China.
“These name changes appear to be part of the Chinese government’s efforts to erase the cultural and religious expressions of the Uyghurs“, denounced the director of HRW for China, Maya Wang.
In a joint investigation with the organization Uyghur Help (Uyghur Hjelp), based in Norway, HRW has tracked through the website of the National Bureau of Statistics of China the names of localities between 2009 and 2023 and has identified that 630 have changed in this sense, with the three most common names among the new substitutions being “happiness,” “unity,” and “harmony.”
(With information from EuropaPress)
