All Reading
This section contains a curated list of useful articles, investigations, books and other reading materials. The list is updated on a weekly basis and suggestions for additions are welcome.
Starting Points:
Under pressure in China, Zara deleted a statement about Xinjiang
Until yesterday, Zara’s parent company, Inditex, had a statement on its website stating the company’s zero-tolerance policy for forced labor and that it did not have relationships with any factories in Xinjiang. It has since been removed.
Who’s trying to weaken a US bill targeting forced labor in China?
A coalition of groups calling for an end to the repression of Uyghurs in China is demanding a number of prominent companies come clean about their lobbying and other actions to alter or weaken a proposed bill targeting imports made with Uyghur forced labor. Among the companies it has asked to publicly disclose their activities are Apple, Nike, Walmart, Adidas, Gap, and several others.
More than 1 million Muslims are detained in China—but how did we get that number?
In the tightly-controlled information system that is China, journalists and independent researchers have almost no access to the region—but that hasn’t stopped scholars, rights groups and members of the Uyghur diaspora from arriving at estimates of the numbers of camps and their residents. They rely on leaked information, analysis of security spending, and satellite imagery, as well as accounts from individual families.
China is touting its protection of human rights in a Muslim-majority region riven by violence
China put out a policy paper today on human rights in the Muslim-heavy Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the Chinese government has been cracking down extensively in recent years. The report, titled “Human Rights in Xinjiang—Development and Progress” declares that “Before 1949, when People’s Republic of China was founded, people in Xinjiang had been suffering from foreign invasions’ influences, ripped by the feudal society and suppressed by privileged religious stratum.” Since then, it goes on to say, China has provided the foundations for “people with different ethnicities in Xinjiang to truly enjoy human rights.”