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UN human rights experts have expressed grave concerns over the alleged imprisonment and forced labour of Muslim Uyghurs in China. They have demanded unrestricted entry to the nation for fact-finding missions and urged both domestic and foreign businesses to carefully examine their supply chains.
"New U.N. Special Rapporteur's Report on Contemporary Forms of Slavery concludes that forced labour is taking place in Xinjiang," Adrian Zenz, a China researcher tweeted, along with a copy of the report.
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The Special Rapporteur, Tomoya Obokata, further found that "the nature and extent of powers exercised" meant that "some instances may amount to enslavement as a crime against humanity."
According to reports, Uyghur workers have been exposed to abusive living and working conditions that may constitute human trafficking, arbitrary detention, forced labour, and enslavement through the use of forced labour.
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In response to the most recent report, the president of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), Dolkun Isa, stated that the Special Rapporteur had reached the same conclusion as we in the Uyghur advocacy movement had for years.
"Forced labour programmes have been weaponised as a tool of genocide by the Chinese Communist Party - and yet corporations around the world continue to turn a profit from atrocity and governments refuse to legislate to put a stop to it. This report's findings must be a wakeup call to those that have so far refused to take action on the proliferation of Uyghur forced labour-made goods in global supply chains."
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This is a significant development in the world community's reaction to the Chinese Communist Party's well-documented use of Uyghur forced labour, according to a WUC statement.
"Those implicated cannot feign ignorance when the world's largest and most prolific intergovernmental organisation, the UN, has laid bare the extremities of modern slavery in East Turkistan," WUC said.
The Munich-based organisation urged governments and businesses all around the world to recognise the report's findings and take appropriate steps to guarantee that they do not continue to be party to crimes against humanity and contemporary atrocities.
(With ANI inputs)
