In an open letter published on Wednesday, Caritas Luxembourg expressed its concerns over the "worrying situation" of the Uyghur minority living in China.
Support for underprivileged populations and respect for human dignity are at the heart of Caritas Luxembourg's work, both in Luxembourg and abroad. With working conditions, particularly forced labour and the exploitation of vulnerable people, being key subjects of international cooperation, the Luxembourgish charity said that it was "very concerned about the abuses committed against the Uyghur minority residing in western China".
According to research from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), 82 brands in the automotive, IT, textile and e-commerce industries directly or indirectly benefit from the forced labour and exploitation of the Uyghur people. Caritas noted that several of these brands are present in Luxembourg, where products resulting from forced labour are imported and sold.
In what is now Xinjiang, the Chinese government is said to be committing serious human rights violations targeting the Uyghur population, a Turkic and Muslim ethnic group who have lived in Central Asia for more than a millennium. These abuses reportedly consist of the arbitrary detention of at least one million people in re-education camps, targeted assassinations, forced sterilisations and the organised and systematic transfer of Uyghurs to other regions of China where they are said to be working in factories under conditions indicative of forced labour. United Nations (UN) human rights experts have expressed concern that these so-called centres, due to their coercive nature, constitute detention centres. In 2020, reports revealed that forced labour by Uyghurs had spread beyond Xinjiang, with at least 80,000 Uyghurs transferred to factories across China where they are held under constant surveillance and must undergo ideological training to renounce their religion and culture.
In December 2020, the United States banned the importation of cotton and tomatoes from the Xinjiang region. In January 2021, British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab said that the United Kingdom had a "moral duty" to take action to ban imports and exports linked to forced labour by Uyghurs.
Caritas stressed that "now is the time for Luxembourg, candidate for the United Nations Human Rights Council for 2022-2024, to take a stand on human rights violations". The charity added that, given the commitments made in the Luxembourg's National Action Plan to Implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the question arises as to whether the continued importation of products resulting from forced labour would not represent an inconsistency with these commitments. Caritas Luxembourg concluded that the public had a right to know whether they are purchasing products made through forced labour and any other practice that violates human dignity.
