Slavery in China: UN report exposes skeleton in the cupboard

Beijing [China], August 31 (ANI): The report of a U.N. investigator has now exposed the skeleton in the cupboard: contemporary forms of slavery are practised in China in the shape of forced labour for the Uyghur minorities in the Xinjiang region as well as in Tibet which has been under the illegal occupation of China.

There have been many claims that China engages in systematic and widespread abuse of ethnic and religious minorities in the western region of the country. Now the report by Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Tomoya Obokata has confirmed these.

Based on an assessment of available information from many sources, including victims and government accounts, Obokata regards it as reasonable to conclude that forced labour 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.

Obokata has 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 labour programme in which surplus rural labourers are transferred to other work. He has said labour transfer is practised extensively in Tibet where farmers, herders and other rural workers are transferred to low-skilled and low-paid employment.

In many cases, this work is involuntary. Workers are subjected to excessive surveillance, abusive living and working conditions, restricted movements, threats, physical or sexual violence and other inhuman and degrading treatments. Obokata believes some of the instances may amount to enslavement and a crime against humanity that merit a more detailed independent analysis.

Obokata is a professor of international law and human rights at Keele University. He was appointed special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery in March 2020. “This is an important conclusion by the top U.N. expert on this issue in the world,” former professor at the University of Nottingham James Cockayne has said.

The U.S. has been developing measures to punish China over its human rights practices in the Xinjiang region, including the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act which bans the import of anything produced in Xinjiang unless the companies can provide “clear and compelling evidence” it was not made with forced labour.

A report compiled by the Bureau of International Labour of the U.S. Department of Labour says that an estimated 100,000 Uyghur and other ethnic minorities in China could be working under conditions of forced labour following detention in re-education camps.

The department has listed 18 goods in China that are produced with forced labour of Muslim and other ethnic minorities: artificial flowers, bricks, Christmas decorations, coal, cotton, electronics, fireworks, fish, footwear, garments, gloves, hair products, nails, polysilicon, textiles, threads and yarns, tomato products and toys.

While the production of these goods through forced labour takes place primarily in Xinjiang, Uyghur minorities have also been transported to work in other provinces of China; increasing the number of goods potentially made with forced labour and broadening the risk of forced labour in supply chains. In the vast surveillance state of Xinjiang, workers are subjected to constant surveillance and isolation.

In the coastal Chinese province of Fujian, workers in a factory in Quanzhou face similar abuses. Uyghur workers are made to live in dormitories surrounded by an iron gate and security cameras, separated from Han workers. Uyghur workers labour for more hours than their Han co-workers and are escorted back to their dormitories by police officers. A roll call ensures that no one is missing. Uyghur workers at the factory cannot leave at their free will. Even if they leave, they cannot go far as the local police have confiscated their identification materials.

Senior Researcher in China Studies at Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation Adrian Zenz has noted that the “U.N. Special Rapporteur’s statement is very significant, coming from an authoritative expert at a major multilateral institution. Very important that he did not just focus on Xinjiang but also paid attention to the situation in Tibet, which is these days easily overshadowed by Xinjiang.” According to the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, Adrian Zenz is among the earliest researchers who had criticized China for bringing the system in Xinjiang of militarized vocational training to Tibet.

Tibet Bureau Geneva Representative Thinlay Chukki has called for an independent analysis on the existence of enslavement as a crime against humanity in Tibet in the light of Obokata’s report “which has not only debunked China’s development-employment-income rhetoric but also clearly categorised the extensive labour transfer programme of Tibetan farmers, herders and other rural workers as forced labour.”

Kalon (Minister) of the Department of Information and International Relations of CTA Norzin Dolma has called for a special session of the U.N. on human rights violations being perpetrated by China against Tibetans, Uyghur Muslims and others. “Tibetans are being systematically discriminated against in their own homeland in Tibet and often relegated as second class citizens facing human rights violations.”

Tomoya Obokata’s report that China has imposed on Tibet the system of forced labour has come as a severe indictment of tall Chinese claims that with its occupation of Tibet the Chinese army had abolished slavery as practised by the former aristocrats and religious leaders of Tibet. A reading of the magnum opus ‘A History of Modern Tibet‘ written by distinguished historian Melvyn C. Goldstein leads to the impression that the way serfdom was practised in Tibet before Chinese occupation had positive aspects, too, and offered stability to the state as well as to the serfs.

‘”Tibetan serfs were not necessarily downtrodden,” he has written, “and some serfs held substantial amounts of land and were quite affluent. They might well have their own ‘hereditary’ servants and numerous tenants who provided agricultural labour in return for the lease of some of the fields.

The manorial estates held by aristocrats, monasteries and incarnate lamas comprised arable land and a labour force, or serfs, obliged to farm it. From between a half to three-fourths of these holdings, which the serfs were obliged to cultivate, the landlord received the total yield. From the remaining fields the serfs derived their subsistence. They had complete control over these fields except the power of sale.

Under Tibetan social theory serfs were obliged to provide free labour as this was regarded as the tax for the land from which they derived their subsistence. It was a feudal system that had provided stability to Tibetan society for more than 1,000 years without any social upheaval. The forcible transfer of Tibetans to low-skilled and low-paid employment to serve the interest of the economy of mainland China introduced by the Communist Party of China completely disrupted their traditional and peaceful way of life without offering any benefit by way of better income and improved livelihood.

President of China Xi Jinping made a visit to the Xinjiang region from July 12 to July 15, 2022; his first after 2014. The world had expected that it was to provide the proverbial healing touch to the suffering people of the Xinjiang region. That was, however, not to be. According to reports and visuals on the visit from the Xinjiang region, there were photo ops of large crowds clapping to cheer the President who, however, devoted more time in inspecting the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), which is under U.S. sanctions.

A Press release by the U. S. Department of Treasury on July 31, 2020, described the XPCC as “a para-military organization in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region that is subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party. The XPCC enhances internal control over the region by advancing China’s vision of economic development in XUAR (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonmous Region) that emphasizes subordination to central planning and resource extraction.

The XPCC’s structure reflects a military organization, with 14 divisions made up of dozens of regiments.” A former Political Commissar of the XPCC and the Commander of the XPCC were also sanctioned for “serious human rights abuses against ethnic minorities of Xinjiang.” The European Union, too, has imposed sanction on XPCC for “atrocious human rights violations,” according to an EU statement on March 23, 2021.

During his Xinjiang visit, the President of China who also heads the Central Military Commission, went to the Xinjiang Military Command of the People’s Liberation Army and praised the troops for their “outstanding contributions” to border defence and stabilization of the Xinjiang province. The Xinjiang region borders Ladakh in India where in 2020 Chinese troops occupied in violation of protocols on border management territories claimed by India.

That nothing tangible on the issue of withdrawal of Chinese troops from areas occupied by it transpired at the 16th round of border talks between the Indian and the Chinese armies that followed soon after the visit of the President came as a disappointment. Nor did his praise of troops in the border province where his government is widely accused of oppressing predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities offered any healing touch to the people of Xinjiang. (ANI)