{"id":1507,"date":"2020-01-02T08:18:04","date_gmt":"2020-01-02T08:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=1507"},"modified":"2020-01-02T08:22:09","modified_gmt":"2020-01-02T08:22:09","slug":"inside-chinas-push-to-turn-muslim-minorities-into-an-army-of-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/akademiye.org\/en\/?p=1507","title":{"rendered":"Inside China\u2019s Push to Turn Muslim Minorities Into an Army of Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Workers in uniform at a labor compound in eastern Xinjiang, China, in 2017.<\/p>\n

By\u00a0Chris Buckley<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Austin Ramzy<\/a>, Dec. 30, 2019<\/span><\/p>\n

KASHGAR, China \u2014 The order from Chinese officials was blunt and urgent. Villagers from Muslim minorities should be pushed into jobs, willing or not. Quotas would be set and families penalized if they refused to go along.<\/p>\n

\u201cMake people who are hard to employ renounce their selfish ideas,\u201d the labor bureau of Qapqal, a county in the western region of Xinjiang,\u00a0said in the directive last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Such orders are part of an aggressive campaign to remold Xinjiang\u2019s Muslim minorities \u2014 mostly Uighurs and Kazakhs \u2014 into an army of workers for factories and other big employers. Under pressure from the authorities, poor farmers, small traders and idle villagers of working age attend training and indoctrination courses for weeks or months, and are then assigned to stitch clothes, make shoes, sweep streets or fill other jobs.<\/p>\n

These labor programs represent an expanding front in a major effort\u00a0by China\u2019s leader, Xi Jinping<\/a>, to entrench control over this region, where these minorities make up about half the population. They are crucial to the government\u2019s strategy of social re-engineering alongside the indoctrination camps, which have held one million or more Uighurs and Kazakhs.<\/p>\n

The labor bureau of Qapqal ordered that villagers should undergo military-style training to convert them into obedient workers, loyal to employers and the ruling Communist Party. \u201cTurn around their ingrained lazy, lax, slow, sloppy, freewheeling, individualistic ways so they obey company rules,\u201d the directive said.<\/p>\n

The government maintains that the Uighur and Kazakh villagers are \u201crural surplus labor\u201d and are an underemployed population that threatens social stability. Putting them in steady, supervised government-approved work, officials say, will erase poverty and slow the spread of religious extremism and ethnic violence.<\/p>\n

The government describes the laborers as volunteers, though critics say they are clearly coerced. Official documents, interviews with experts, and visits by The New York Times to Xinjiang indicate that local plans uproot villagers, restrict their movements and pressure them to stay at jobs.<\/p>\n

Experts say those harsh methods can amount to forced labor, potentially tainting the global supply chain that uses Xinjiang workers, particularly for cotton goods. The Japanese retailers Muji and Uniqlo say they have used cotton from the region, while Walmart has bought goods from a company that until recently used workers from Xinjiang.<\/p>\n

Given the tight control on Xinjiang, \u201cwe have to assume for the moment that there\u2019s a very significant risk of coercion,\u201d said\u00a0Amy K. Lehr<\/a>, director of the human rights initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the co-author of a study on\u00a0Xinjiang\u2019s labor<\/a>\u00a0programs.<\/p>\n

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Forced labor could arise \u201ceven if the coercion was implicit or the programs offered workers a decent income,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The labor programs operate in parallel with the indoctrination camps in Xinjiang, that have drawn condemnation from Western governments. Camp inmates also receive job training, and officials say that many will be sent to work in factories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n