3 CHINESE ACTIVISTS ARRESTED, MISSING
They were investigating factory that makes Ivanka Trump shoes for labor violations
The arrest and disappearance of three labor activists investigating a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump-branded shoes in China prompted a call for her brand to cease working with the supplier and raised questions about whether the first family’s commercial interests would muddy U.S. leadership on human rights.
The men were working with a U.S. nonprofit to publish a report next month alleging low pay, excessive overtime and possible misuse of student labor, according to China Labor Watch executive director Li Qiang, who lost contact with the investigators over the weekend.
China Labor Watch has been exposing poor working conditions at suppliers to some of the world’s best-known companies for nearly two decades, but Li said his work has never before attracted this level of scrutiny from China’s state security apparatus.
The arrest and disappearances come amid a crackdown on perceived threats to the stability of China’s ruling Communist Par- ty, particularly from sources with foreign ties such as China Labor Watch.
Faced with rising labor unrest and a slowing economy, Beijing has taken a stern approach to activism in southern China’s manufacturing belt and to human rights advocates generally, spark- ing a wave of critical reports about disappearances, public confessions, forced repatriation and torture in custody.
China Labor Watch’s investigation also had an unusual target: a brand owned by the daughter of the president of the United States.
147 The number of nations that have ratified the Paris Agreement. They pledge to limit global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius.