China builds 135 factories inside Xinjiang detention camps; Rights advocate says ‘stop producing and sourcing from Xinjiang’

(Worthy News) – A new report by Buzzfeed News reveals that among hundreds of detention camps recently built by China in Xinjiang, at least 135 compounds hold factories where prisoners can be forced to produce goods for export into major supply chains around the world. The report is based on government records, interviews, and hundreds of satellite images, Buzzfeed News said.

Buzzfeed News reported in August 2020 that hundreds of compounds that look like prisons were discovered to have been built in very recent years as China intensified its persecution of Muslim minorities, including Uighurs and Kazakhs. The report shows that factory facilities covering over 21 million square feet have now been added to at least 135 of the detention compounds. “Forced labor on a vast scale is almost certainly taking place inside facilities like these, according to researchers and interviews with former detainees,” the Buzzfeed News report said.

Moreover, the report noted: “[The factories] are growing in a way that mirrors the rapid expansion of the mass detention campaign, which has ensnared more than 1 million people since it began in 2016. Fourteen million square feet of new factories were built in 2018 alone.”

Having the fastest GDP growth rate in China, Xinjiang exports a wide range of products to the world, with the US being one of its fastest-growing markets. According to the report, Xinjiang factories produce many goods that end up being bought by US consumers.

In a statement about the issue, Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium asserted: “Corporations should stop producing in, and sourcing from, Xinjiang. There is no way to produce responsibly in the region until the forced labor and broader repression ends.”

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