The use of forced labor is a tool of control, exploitation, and dehumanization. Throughout history, forced labor has been deployed by regimes as a method to subjugate populations, strip individuals of their freedom, and use them as mere instruments of production. While forced labor exists in various forms globally, it reaches a particularly cruel dimension when employed as part of a broader system of repression and genocide. In modern times, no clearer example of this exists than in East Turkistan, which Beijing refers to the as the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region”, where China uses forced labor as a key component of its genocide against the native Uyghur and other Turkic peoples. What might appear on the surface as economic exploitation is, in fact, a systemic effort to dehumanize and destroy an entire population, both physically and psychologically. Since 1949, when the PLA invaded East Turkistan, Uyghurs have been subjected to various forms of forced labor. For example, “hashar” is Uyghur terminology for forced and unpaid labor in fields and roads, is still used in East Turkistan.
The systematic colonization and persecution of the East Turkistani people escalated in 2014 under the directives of Xi Jinping, when China established a vast network of prisons and internment camps. In these facilities, millions of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Turkic peoples are incarcerated, subjected to torture, indoctrination, and extermination. Outside the camps and prisons, millions of Uyghurs are being forcibly transferred to factories both within and outside East Turkistan, where they endure forced labor, contributing to a modern system of slavery.
This system of Uyghur forced labor is not confined to East Turkistan and China alone—it has international implications. Many global corporations are complicit in this crime against humanity, with China using deceptive language like “poverty alleviation through the labor transfer” to mask the reality. Both Chinese domestic companies and multinational brands participate in these abuses.........