British retailers urged to ban Uighur-picked cotton products

British high street brands are under pressure from human rights campaigners to ban cotton picked in the part of China that is home to its oppressed Uighur population.

It came after reports revealed at least half a million Muslims are being forced to work in the fields of the Chinese region amid an ongoing antiMuslim crackdown by Beijing that has seen people detained and put into so-called re-education camps.

Campaigners say retailers’ existing policies do not go far enough to ensure that cotton from the Xinjiang region does not end up in the supply chain, and that it seemed virtually impossible to ensure that raw materials from the region are not the product of forced labour.

Xinjiang is a major global hub for the cotton industry producing 85 per cent of China’s and 20 per cent of the world’s cotton, and relies heavily on manual labour to do so.

Carry Somers, of Fashion Revolution, a not-for-profit organisation, said retailers should not shift responsibility onto suppliers and that a ban on cotton from the Xinjiang region is necessary: “While many brands have been quick to reassure their customers that they don’t sell clothing sewn in Xinjiang region, most of them have only a shadowy picture of where their cotton comes from.

“In order for brands and retailers to eliminate the use of forced labour

such as the Uighurs and other minorities who are picking and processing the cotton for our clothes, they first must trace their entire supply chain.”

Tamara Cincik, of Fashion Roundtable, a lobby group, said: “As someone from Muslim heritage, I take this issue very seriously and urge all brands to consider their supply chain options, moving to organic cotton manufactured by transparent and ethical farms and factories.”

Information from Chinese government documents and state media reports provide evidence that hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to pick cotton by hand in China under a government scheme, according to the Centre for Global Policy, a US-based think tank.

It alleges that in 2018, three majority-Uighur areas within Xinjiang alone mobilised at least 570,000 people to pick cotton.

Beijing denies that Uighurs’ rights are abused and says re-education centres provide vocational training to help people gain employment, and are necessary to curb extremism.