Some members of the group meet for a photo op
October 2026
Throughout August the Salisbury group took part in the national campaign to highlight the plight of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang province in China. We reported on the extreme measures used by the Chinese to repress the culture, language and religion of this population and the imprisonment of around a million as part of a process of ‘re-education’. We also noted the vast programme of forced labour particularly of cotton much of it finding its way its way into high street clothing with seemingly little concern by our retailers.
The group held a brief photo opportunity today to highlight the Uyghurs and to keep them in the public eye.
A recent report by Global Rights Compliance suggests we may have been a bit ‘narrow’ in focusing on cotton as the latest 5 year plan for the region in which it is explained:
“The Plan’s overriding priority is to position China at the “forefront of global science and technology”, by eliminating critical technological dependencies and ensuring that its development trajectory cannot be disrupted by external pressure or supply chain coercion.
“This self-reliance shift ultimately relies on material foundations. The success of these goals depends on securing reliable access to raw materials at scale. The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) is central: the region holds the majority of China’s beryllium reserves, a material with no substitute in semiconductor manufacturing, and provides the cheap coal-based energy that makes energy-intensive mineral processing”.
This suggests the process of repression will continue because this dominance relies not just on the material itself but its processing. This will also need forced labour to achieve.
There are signs that politicians are beginning to worry about the ‘China threat’ which is on several levels. Our concern is with the rights of a people who are not Han Chinese, who are routinely persecuted and the fruits of their persecution finds its way into products we buy in the West.
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