These are strange times. Good guys. Bad guys. Confused guys. Social justice warriors are toppling statues of slaveholders from 300 years ago while winking at modern-day enslavement on a massive scale.
I’m talking about the dirty little secret of how companies like Nike, Adidas, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and at least 83 other multinational corporations have been linked to forced labor by Uyghurs in factories across China.
(Photo courtesy of Facebook/Joseph Farah)
The report back in March by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimates that more than 80,000 Uyghurs, Chinese Muslims, were transferred to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019.
It has escaped the attention of most people in the West that the likes of Nike, Colin Kaepernick, the Gap, Tommy Hilfiger and even Google are on the wrong side of this contemporary social justice issue.
But it was hard to miss the irony. Forced-labor brokers have advertised to these companies their willingness to exploit the Uyghurs, boasting the “advantages” of taking workers as young as 16, including “semi-military style management, [that they] can withstand hardship, no loss of personnel. Minimum order 100 workers.”
On June 17, President Donald Trump signed into law the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, which aims to punish China for its barbaric treatment of the ethnic minority. It was passed almost unanimously by the House and Senate.
The law gives the Trump administration 180 days to identify Chinese officials responsible for human-rights abuses and would level sanctions on those alleged to have roles in the mass surveillance and detention.
But what about the corporate responsibility of Nike, Adidas, Apple, Microsoft and Google? It’s rather vague.
“The Act holds accountable perpetrators of human-rights violations and abuses such as the systematic use of indoctrination camps, forced labor, and intrusive surveillance to eradicate the ethnic identity and religious beliefs of Uyghur and other minorities in China,” Trump said in a statement.
It’s all on China rather than on the multinationals. And that’s the pity of the Trump plan as far as it goes.
There is one unspeakable civil rights holocaust talking place in the world today – and I’m not speaking of anything Americans are currently protesting.
“There also have been allegations of Uyghurs and others in religious minorities being the victims of organ harvesting. Recently, the Associated Press reported that Uyghur women are forcibly sterilized and given unwanted abortions as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign to keep the Muslim minorities’ birth rate down.”
Joseph Farah
WND Founder and CEO
There also have been allegations of Uyghurs and others in religious minorities being the victims of organ harvesting. Recently, the Associated Press reported that Uyghur women are forcibly sterilized and given unwanted abortions as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign to keep the Muslim minorities’ birth rate down.
The majority of Uyghurs live in detention camps – a nice way of saying concentration camps or “re-education camps.” Those least fortunate get to spend their days making sneakers and sportswear for consumers in the West.
This is not an exaggeration. Yet there is hardly a tear being shed for them. They have not been the source of protests within the United States. No one has “taken a knee” for them – most especially other Muslims.
Yet, I will say a prayer tonight for these lonely, isolated people. And proclaim loudly, “Uyghur Lives Matter.”
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND. He has written more than a dozen books, his latest “The Gospel in Every Book in the Old Testament.”
View the latest footage produced by Channel 4 News of the UK of the busing of Uyghurs for forced labor below.
