All Reading

This section contains a curated list of useful articles, investigations, books and other reading materials. The list is updated on a weekly basis and suggestions for additions are welcome.

Starting Points:

Eyewitness Accounts

Overview Reports

Lists / Databases of Victims

Satellite Imagery of Camps, Prisons & Cultural Destruction

Built on Repression
Helena Kennedy Centre Lina K Helena Kennedy Centre Lina K

Built on Repression

This report investigates the increased manufacturing of PVC through state-sponsored labour transfers in China’s Uyghur Region and the routes by which the resulting building materials make their way into international markets, providing a road map for understanding the violations occurring in Xinjiang and how the products of those abuses pervade supply chains.

Read More
Coercive Labor and Forced Displacement in Xinjiang’s Cross-Regional Labor Transfer Program
Jamestown Foundation Lina K Jamestown Foundation Lina K

Coercive Labor and Forced Displacement in Xinjiang’s Cross-Regional Labor Transfer Program

This report provides new evidence from Chinese sources that Xinjiang’s labor transfers to other regions or provinces in China meet the forced labor definition of the International Labor Organization (ILO). The report develops a process-focused evaluation model for evaluating coercion at each stage of the labor transfer program. The Nankai Report, along with other Chinese academic sources, indicates that labor transfers are not just serving economic purposes, but are implemented with the intention to forcibly displace ethnic minority populations from their heartlands, intentionally reducing their population density, and tearing apart homogeneous communities.

Read More
Coercive Labor in Xinjiang: Labor Transfer and the Mobilization of Ethnic Minorities to Pick Cotton
Newlines Institute Lina K Newlines Institute Lina K

Coercive Labor in Xinjiang: Labor Transfer and the Mobilization of Ethnic Minorities to Pick Cotton

Xinjiang produces 85 percent of China’s and 20 percent of the world’s cotton. Chinese cotton products, in turn, constitute an important basis for garment production in numerous other Asian countries. New evidence shows that hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority laborers in Xinjiang are being forced to pick cotton by hand through a coercive state-mandated labour transfer and “poverty alleviation” scheme, potentially affecting all global supply chains that involve Xinjiang cotton as a raw material.

Read More
China’s ‘tainted’ cotton
BBC Lina K BBC Lina K

China’s ‘tainted’ cotton

China is forcing hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other minorities into hard, manual labour in the vast cotton fields of its western region of Xinjiang, according to new research seen by the BBC. Based on newly discovered online documents, it provides the first clear picture of the potential scale of forced labour in the picking of a crop that accounts for a fifth of the world’s cotton supply and is used widely throughout the global fashion industry.

Read More
Addressing Forced Labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: Toward a Shared Agenda
CSIS Lina K CSIS Lina K

Addressing Forced Labor in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region: Toward a Shared Agenda

The forced labor of ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), as part of a broader pattern of severe human rights abuses, is a significant and growing concern that demands the attention of governments and private-sector actors across the world. Products entering the United States, Europe, and other democracies are at risk of being affected by these forced labor practices, which often occur several steps away from global brands in supply chains.

This brief explores what the XUAR produces, the sectors that are implicated, the resulting sourcing challenges, and the opportunities for collective action to be explored in further research.

Read More
China Cables: Who Are the Uighurs and Why Mass Detention?
ICIJ Lina K ICIJ Lina K

China Cables: Who Are the Uighurs and Why Mass Detention?

China’s mass detention of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities living in its western region of Xinjiang has sparked alarm and condemnation across the world. The China Cables investigation reveals classified Chinese government directives that provided operational plans for the internment camps and orders for carrying out mass detentions guided by sweeping data collection and artificial intelligence.

To better explain China’s actions in Xinjiang and the findings of the China Cables, this report answers some key questions about who is involved, the crackdown’s origins, and the significance of the secret documents.

Read More