UN Investigator: Contemporary Slavery Extensive and in China
A U.N. investigator says contemporary forms of slavery are widely practiced around the world, including forced labor for China’s Uyghur minority.
A U.N. investigator says contemporary forms of slavery are widely practiced around the world, including forced labor for China’s Uyghur minority, bonded labor for the lowest caste Dalits in South Asia, and domestic servitude in Gulf countries, Brazil and Colombia.
Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Tomoya Obokat adds that traditional enslavement, especially of minorities, is found in Mauritania, Mali and Niger in Africa’s Sahel region.
He said in a report to the U.N. General Assembly circulated Wednesday that child labor -- another contemporary form of slavery -- exists in all regions of the world, including its worst forms.
“In Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East, the Americas and Europe, between 4 and 6 percent of children are said to be in child labor, and the percentage is much higher in Africa (21.6%), with the highest rate in sub-Saharan Africa (23.9%),” he said
His conclusion about Uyghurs in China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang follows a U.S. ban imposed last December on imports from the region unless businesses can prove items are made without forced labor. There have been many claims China engages in systemic and widespread abuse of ethnic and religious minorities in its western region.
Obokata's findings drew sharp criticism from China’s Foreign Ministry.
In the report, Obokata said that based on an independent assessment of available information from many sources, including victims and government accounts, he “regards it as reasonable to conclude that forced labor among Uyghur, Kazakh and other ethnic minorities in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing has been occurring in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.”
He cited two systems used by China -- the detention of minorities for vocational skills education and training followed by work placement, and a poverty alleviation through labor program in which surplus rural laborers are transferred to other work. He said labor transfer is also practiced in Tibet where farmers, herders and other rural workers are transferred into low-skilled and low-paid employment.
While these programs may create jobs and income as the government claims, Obokata said in many cases the work is involuntary and workers are subject to excessive surveillance, abusive living and working conditions, restricted movements, threats, physical or sexual violence, and other inhuman or degrading treatment.
“Some instances may amount to enslavement as a crime against humanity, meriting a further independent analysis,” he said.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused Obokata of choosing “to believe in lies and disinformation about Xinjiang spread by the U.S. and some other Western countries and anti-China forces.”