LG and Dell said they had “no evidence” of forced labor in their supply chains but would investigate, as did Huawei.
Lenovo also pointed to a 2018 audit by the Reliable Business Alliance in which OFILM scored very well.Īll the companies that responded said they required suppliers to follow strict labor standards. Lenovo confirmed that it sources screens, cameras, and fingerprint scanners from OFILM but said it was not aware of the allegations and would investigate. It touts customers including Apple, Samsung, Lenovo, Dell, HP, LG and Huawei, although there was no way for the AP to track specific products to specific companies. OFILM’s website indicates the Xinjiang workers make screens, camera cover lenses and fingerprint scanners. Bringing them into the Han Chinese heartland is a way to turbocharge this transformation.” “So what do you do? You ‘educate’ them, you find ways to transform them in your own image. “They think these people are poorly educated, isolated, backwards, can’t speak Mandarin,” said James Leibold, a scholar of Chinese ethnic policy at La Trobe University in Melbourne. However, experts say that like the internment camps, the program is part of a broader assault on the Uighur culture, breaking up social and family links by sending people far from their homes to be assimilated into the dominant Han Chinese culture. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday called concern over possible coerced labor under the program “groundless” and “slander.”
The Chinese government says the labor program is a way to train Uighurs and other minorities and give them jobs. “They don’t let them worship inside,” said a Hui Muslim woman who worked in the factory for several weeks alongside the Uighurs. They are not allowed to leave or pray – unlike the Hui Muslim migrants also working there, who are considered less of a threat by the Chinese government. Workers are often enrolled in classes where state-sponsored teachers give lessons in Mandarin, China’s dominant language, or politics and “ethnic unity.” Conditions in the jobs vary in terms of pay and restrictions.Īt the OFILM factory, Uighurs are paid the same as other workers but otherwise treated differently, according to residents of the neighborhood. Most were sent by force, although in a few cases it wasn’t clear if they consented. A dozen Uighurs and Kazakhs told the AP they knew people who were sent by the state to work in factories in China’s east, known as inner China - some from the camps, some plucked from their families, some from vocational schools. When detainees “graduate” from the camps, documents show, many are sent to work in factories. China has long suspected the Uighurs of harboring separatist tendencies because of their distinct culture, language and religion. Over the past four years, the Chinese government has detained more than a million people from the far west Xinjiang region, most of them Uighurs, in internment camps and prisons where they go through forced ideological and behavioral re-education. The connection between OFILM, the supplier that owns the Nanchang factory, and the tech giants is the latest sign that companies outside China are benefiting from coercive labor practices imposed on the Uighurs, a Turkic ethnic group, and other minorities. Their forays out are limited to rare chaperoned trips, they are not allowed to worship or cover their heads, and they must attend special classes in the evenings, according to former and current workers and shopkeepers in the area. Yet the mostly Muslim ethnic Uighurs who labor in the factory are isolated within a walled compound that is fortified with security cameras and guards at the entrance.
Throughout the neighborhood, women in headscarves stroll through the streets, and Arabic signs advertise halal supermarkets and noodle shops. NANCHANG, China (AP) - In a lively Muslim quarter of Nanchang city, a sprawling Chinese factory turns out computer screens, cameras and fingerprint scanners for a supplier to international tech giants such as Apple and Lenovo.