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

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.

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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.

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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.

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