Gloves made in China for the popular French brand Lacoste appear to have been sewn at a factory where Uighur Muslims face forced ideological and behavioral re-education, a US-based labor rights group said.
Lacoste, known for its iconic green crocodile logo, says it halted shipments after learning of labor abuse in its supply chain from Washington-based labor group Worker Rights Consortium.
The group alleges that Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are being forced to sew the Lacoste-branded gloves.
Photo: AFP
A Lacoste spokeswoman said that the Chinese factory had been visited by auditors, who interviewed workers and did not report any concerns.
“Lacoste prohibits the use of forced, mandatory or unpaid labor of any type,” company spokeswoman Nathalie Beguinot said.
She said that 95 pairs of gloves from the factory in question were sold in Europe and that unsold gloves made at Yili Zhuo Wan Garment Manufacturing Co (伊犁卓萬服飾製造公司) have been warehoused.
Worker Rights Consortium executive director Scott Nova said that Lacoste and other buyers should have known better than to trust auditors who interview workers on site, where they cannot speak freely.
“Given the climate of terror the government has created in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, given its intensive efforts to conceal proof of forced labor from foreign eyes, and given the pervasive surveillance apparatus that makes a confidential conversation oxymoronic, no worker is going to tell a factory auditor that her employer and the government are breaking the law by forcing her to work against her will,” Nova said.
Yili Zhuo Wan officials could not be reached for comment.
Last year, nonprofit group reports described forced labor and indoctrination of hundreds of people inside the factory.
The people were swept up as part of a massive Chinese government crackdown that by some estimates has locked away more than 1 million minorities, most of them Muslims, over the past three years, the reports said.
The Chinese government denies this. It has said that the detention centers are for voluntary job training and that it does not discriminate based on religion.
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) last year interviewed two former Yili Zhuo Wan workers, who said they were forced to study Mandarin and praise the government.
One, a trained seamstress, said that she was paid about US$37 for her first month and a half of work.
Amy Lehr, who coauthored a CSIS report that included claims of forced labor in Xinjiang said: “This is basically state-encouraged forced labor and part of a much broader pattern of extremely severe human rights violation. It’s an attempt to eradicate a culture and religion.”
It is illegal to import products of forced labor into the US.
Lacoste says the gloves went only to France.
US Representative James McGovern, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China chairman, said that he would like to stop the import of all forced labor-made goods.
“No one should profit from the horrific human rights crimes being committed in Xinjiang,” McGovern said.
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