Tag: 维吾尔人

It’s not just cotton from Xinjiang …


The Uyghurs are exploited across several different sectors

August 2026

We have focused on cotton in previous posts with estimates of around 20% of the cotton clothes we wear has been produced using forced labour. But it’s not only cotton, a large amount of raw materials, and products, are manufactured in Xinjiang also using Uyghur forced labour. This production includes 35% of polysilicon – the raw material used to make solar panels – is created in Xinjiang, along with 10% of global PVC production. 

Although the UK is trying to combat modern slavery through the Modern Slavery Act 2015, this act has no enforceable legislation to prevent those products from entering the UK. As the EU and the US have stronger legislation in place, the UK risks being the dumping ground for products issued from Uyghur forced labour. 

One way to tackle this issue is to contact your local council to urge them to adopt more stringent practices in their procurement contract to ensure the goods and services used by public bodies are not a result of Uyghur forced labour. 

To shine some light on this issue, we are encouraging you to submit a question to Wiltshire Council to ask about processes and safeguards currently in place to prevent public bodies from procuring goods or services that are issued from forced labour. Some local councils have already adopted measures to address Uyghur forced labour, but you can still ask what is done practically to ensure the motion is respected.  The address is:

Wiltshire Council, Bythesea Road, TROWBRIDGE, BA14 8JN. We could find no general point of contact and searches of their site revealed no relevant policies.

Some local councils give the chance to submit questions to be addressed by the mayor and councillors during meetings. For other councils, you may need to ask them directly how to submit a question, or contact a local councillor directly to engage with them. 

Image: Amnesty USA

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Uyghurs part of repression of all minorities in China


The China Unity law is an act of cultural genocide

The China Unity Law came into force in July and is intended to establish Chinese dominance over all its ethnic minorities. Mandarin will become the dominant language and all 51 of China’s minorities will be affected, around 9% of the total population. We are focusing on the Uyghurs who are being persecuted as part of Amnesty’s Uyghur Awareness Month. The law will be used to justify ever more repression and discrimination over its minorities.

We have to be aware of the wider context however and the threat to human rights inside and outside China. An article By Simon Tisdall in the Guardian (8th August) discusses these wider issues. The new law has been condemned but not too loudly by western governments but more loudly by Amnesty. We must not forget the repression which went on Tibet and also Mongolia: the Uyghurs are just the latest in a line of minorities persecuted by an increasingly authoritarian Xi Jinping.

Tisdall argues that a kind of ‘debilitating fatalism’ has taken hold of the western powers who just watch the ever increasing exercise of power by China. They are threatening Taiwan and with US military stocks reported to be much reduced by the Iran excursion, is now the time when an assault is right for them? They also threaten Japan.

Hong Kong is another example and thousands left the former colony to come to the UK. Free speech is no longer possible. The publisher Jimmy Lai was sentenced in December to 20 years in prison and is in solitary confinement and in poor health. His family say he is denied medical attention which is denied by the Chinese but they do not allow independent verification.

The sad fact is that the cause of human rights in that country and those of its minority populations in particular is bleak. As China becomes more economically and politically powerful and western countries more divided, China is able to pursue its plans with ever greater vigour. Its desire to build the biggest embassy in the west in London seems unstoppable. It is almost certainly to be used for espionage and to exert control over Chinese people living in the UK. Donald Trump’s divisive policies against US allies plays into China (and Russia’s) hands.

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