UK judge denies Uyghur group

LONDON — A British judge on Friday rejected a lawsuit that accused the U.K. government of allowing the import of cotton products associated with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region — though he acknowledged there were “widespread abuses” in the region’s cotton industry.

High Court Justice Ian Dove ruled against a Uyghur organization and a human rights group that claimed the government unlawfully failed to investigate conditions in which cotton was produced.

The far-western Xinjiang region is a major global supplier of cotton, but rights groups have long alleged that the crop is picked and processed by China’s Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in a widespread, state-sanctioned system of forced labor.