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.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying