End Uyghur forced labour
We are part of a coalition of civil society organisations and trade unions united to end state-sponsored forced labour and other egregious human rights abuses against people from the Uyghur Region in China, known to local people as East Turkistan.
Click to tweet!
"#ForcedLabourFashion is woven, sewn, and packaged into the global fashion industry. Uyghur people have lost their freedom and lives, forced to produce your clothes. Don’t fall for @Zara’s well-tailored image. #CallOutZara to #EndUyghurForcedLabour www.ForcedLabourFashion.org" - click to tweet
"Uyghur forced labour taints 20% of the global fashion industry’s cotton garments. Brands like Zara are complicit. Tell @Zara to stop from profiting from #ForcedLabourFashion sales. Tag 3 friends + join our Week of Action: www.ForcedLabourFashion.org #EndUyghurForcedLabour" - click to tweet
"Fast fashion comes at too high a price. 1 in 5 cotton garments are tainted by #UyghurForcedLabour. Brands like @Zara need to stop profiting from #ForcedLabourFashion NOW! Tag three friends and #CallOutZara: www.ForcedLabourFashion.org #EndUyghurForcedLabour" - click to tweet
What is happening?
Under the cover of world tragedy, China is busy continuing it's regime of repression, exploitation and genocide. 1/5 cotton garments have been tainted by Uyghur forced labour. 84% of China's cotton exports come from the Uyghur region where the Uyghur population and other Turkic and Muslim peoples are being forced to work.
Over a million Turkic Uyghurs are detained in concentration camps, prisons, and forced labour factories in China. Detainees are subject to military-style discipline, abused, tortured, and even killed. Survivors report being subjected to electrocution, waterboarding, repeated beatings, stress positions, and injections of unknown substances. This is the biggest detention of an ethno-religious group since World War II.
We are calling on brands and retailers to exit the Uyghur Region at every level of their supply chain, from cotton to finished products, to prevent the use of forced labour of Uyghurs and other groups in other facilities, and to end relationships with suppliers supporting the forced labour system. Brands and retailers must take each of these steps in order to fulfil their corporate responsibility obligations to respect human rights as defined in international principles such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Visit the End Uyghur Forced Labour website for more information.
Sign a petition!
There are over 100 civil society organisations and trade unions taking action against Uyghur forced labour. Many have petitions targeting specific brands who's supply chains touch the Xinjiang region, but all have the same effect. Getting any brand to agree to #EndUyghurForcedLabour in their supply chain will make it more likey for further brands to agree also.
Please sign and share the petitions bellow!
Freedom United - Free Uyghurs from forced labor in China
CSW - Marks & Spencer - Petition and email template
Tell Zara to #EndUyghurForcedLabour with CSW's letter.
How do we know?
Right now, there is near certainty that any brand sourcing apparel, textiles, yarn or cotton from the Uyghur Region is profiting from human rights violations, including forced labour, both in the Uyghur Region and more broadly throughout China. We are asking brands to prove that they aren't.
Most of our information comes from Uyghur groups and The Xinjiang Data Project which brings together rigorous, empirical research on the human rights situation for Uyghurs and other non-Han nationalities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in western China..
The Xinjiang Data Project collects open source data including satellite imagery, Chinese government documents, official statistics and a range of authoritative reports and academic studies, the Xinjiang Data Project documents the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing program of human rights abuses and tech-enhanced authoritarianism in Xinjiang, and explores its global implications.