As evidence of the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs accumulates, with members of the population deported from their homes and often locked up in huge labour camps, there is a growing movement to prevent the exploitation of their forced labour. Civil society, led by an international coalition of NGOs, is putting pressure on companies to avoid using the labour of this Muslim population in Xinjiang in their value chain. This media-led pressure is being further compounded by trade measures adopted by several countries to ban imports from the Chinese province, where 20% of the world's cotton is produced.
Governments react. Amid a trade dispute with China, the US government was the first to take retaliatory action. By July 2020, the US executive had already led the way by sanctioning 11 Chinese companies involved in the repression of the Uighur population, denying them access to US products, technologies and markets. In one of his last actions as US President, on 14 January 2021 Donald Trump announced a ban on imports of cotton, tomatoes and their by-products from Xinjiang. It is not expected that there will be any deviation on this matter following the arrival of Joe Biden into office, with his Secretary of State Anthony Blinken saying he agreed with his predecessor’s accusation of “genocide”.
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