More Than Half a Million Uighurs Forced to Pick Cotton in China, Report Alleges

More Than Half a Million Uighurs Forced to Pick Cotton in China, Report Alleges

Over half a million Uighur laborers in the Northwestern region of Xinjiang, China, have been forced into hand picking cotton through a government run work scheme, according to new report.The Center for Global Policy (CGP), a Washington-based think tank, published a report on Monday stating that 570,000 people from Uighur regions in 2018 were forcibly sent to pick cotton under a labor program meant to target minority groups."New evidence from Chinese government documents and media reports shows that hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority laborers in Xinjiang are being forced to pick cotton by hand through a coercive state-mandated labor transfer and 'poverty alleviation' scheme, with potentially drastic consequences for global supply chains," the report states.Xinjiang is home to roughly 11 million Uighors, a predominantly Muslim-Turkic ethnic minority, and produces 85 percent of China's cotton and 20 percent of the global supply.According to the CGP findings, the total number of forced laborers picking cotton throughout the region exceeds the reported number "by several hundred thousand."The report detailed "grueling" work conditions, and said that workers are heavily surveilled by government officials and police with "military-style management" and political indoctrination.Adrian Zenz, the author of the research, said it was clear that the