H&M joins US and European countries' call to end 'forced labour' in China's Xinjiang

As the United States banned five exports from China's Xinjiang region, Swedish clothing company H&M also decided not to buy raw materials from the region’s farms and factories suspected of using ‘forced labour’. On September 15, the fashion house said that it would no longer source cotton from Xinjiang, which is China’s largest growing area of the cash crop. The company clarified that it did not work with any garment factory in the region. 

H&M said that it had conducted “an inquiry at all the garment manufacturing factories we work with in China aiming to ensure that they are not employing workers ... through what is reported on as labour transfer programmes or employment schemes where forced labour is an increased risk”. 

READ: US State Department Webpage On Xinjiang 'full Of Lies And Rumours': China

The Swedish clothing company joined America and de-linked itself fro Xinjiang, where reports of the incarceration of Uyghur and Kazakh Muslim community have been rampant. Earlier this week, the US had announced that it was severing commercial ties with companies suspected of using ‘forced labour’ in the sensitive border region. The Trump administration banned cotton, hair products, computer components, and some textiles from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

Homeland Security in its official release said that the Withhold Release Orders (WRO) send a clear message to the international community that we will not tolerate the illicit, inhumane, and exploitative practices of forced labour in U.S. supply chains. 

READ: US Blocks 5 Exports From China's Xinjiang Region Over Forced Labour Concern

EU raises concerns 

Meanwhile, H&M also joined other European corporate heavyweights, which have already told Beijing bluntly that they no longer can look the other way from the suspected ethnic war that is raging in the region. Last week, the EU had asked China to permit entry of a team of independent observers to Xinjiang amid fears that around 1.8 million Uyghurs may have been locked up in internment camps. EU’s Council President Charles Michel said that he had raised concerns about Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as China’s imposition of national security laws on Hong Kong during a video conference summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

Xinjiang is a region where the Chinese government is allegedly engaged in systemic human rights abuses against the Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minorities and has been receiving heavy backlash for its inhumane treatment on the Uyghurs globally.

(With inputs from ANI) 

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