From Democracy Digest

A coalition of 37 human rights and civil society groups [Thursday] sent a letter to U.S. Customs and Border Protection urging Acting Commissioner Morgan to issue a Withhold Release Order (“WRO”) which would ban the import of all Chinese cotton, textile, and apparel products tainted by forced labor. 

It is China’s long-standing policy to use prison inmates as forced labor, and since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power it has been shipping prisoners from the interior of China to Xinjiang to do hard labor and “contribute to Xinjiang’s economic development” in the harsh desert environment, the letter (right) stated. Xinjiang now has the highest percentage of prisoners per capita in China. Excluding Uighur re-education camps, there are over 80 prisons in Xinjiang compared to a mere 25 prisons in Shandong Province, despite the latter having a population over four times larger.

China’s Muslim Uighurs face systematic oppression from their own government. Their home province of Xinjiang has been turned into a police state—an estimated one million of them are detained in camps, The Economist (above) observes.

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