XINJIANG – A group of human and labour rights organisations in the United States have filed a formal petition with the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), urging it to issue a regional withhold release order (WRO) on all cotton-made goods linked to the Xinjiang region of China, where mounting evidence suggests Uyghur Muslims are used as forced labour.
A reel of research reports point to the oppression of millions of Uyghur Muslims in what’s feared is “probably the largest incarceration of an ethno-religious minority since the Holocaust.”
Omer Kanat, executive director of Uyghur Human Rights Protect, a signatory of the petition, says: “The large-scale forced-labor program is a core part of the government's plan for control and surveillance of Uyghurs. It is a deliberate policy carried out in every corner of the Uyghur homeland. It is time for concrete action to bring enforcement in line with reality.”
