The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized 32 boxes of women’s leather gloves suspected of forced labor at the Los Angeles/Long Beach seaport on Thursday (Oct. 15), the agency said in a statement. The shipment originated from China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, CBP said.
Customs and Border Protection seized the shipment in September based on a complaint against Yili Zhuowan Garment Manufacturing Co. The shipment was seized under a temporary hold order (WRO) issued by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for apparel produced in China.
“The Trump Administration is taking decisive action to crack down on brutal forced labor practices and push back against China’s unfair trade practices,” said Mark A. Morgan, Acting Director of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Forced labor not only exposes workers to violence and intimidation, it also harms U.S. commerce and the economy.”
U.S. Customs and Protective Service issued five temporary withholding orders banning imports of Chinese products on Sept. 14. A statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security at the time said the suspensions involved products “produced through state-sponsored forced labor in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, where the Chinese government has engaged in systematic human rights abuses against the Uighur people and other ethnic and religious minorities.
Forced Labor Issues
In September, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the cross-party Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and the Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act. The first bill would impose a total ban on the importation of all products from Xinjiang unless companies provide clear and convincing evidence that there is no forced labor in their supply chains. The second bill would direct the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to require U.S.-listed companies to disclose details of their business operations, transactions, and manufacturing supply chains in the Xinjiang region, including whether their products are made through forced labor or whether the manufacturing process has any connection to Xinjiang Uighur internment camps. Both bills have yet to be passed by the Senate and signed by the President before becoming law.
On September 30, the U.S. Department of Labor released a list of 17 Chinese-made products, including gloves and Christmas ornaments, that are believed to have been produced by children or forced labor. In releasing the report, Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia said, “China produces far more goods with forced labor than any other country.
The Chinese government claims that the issue of forced labor in Xinjiang is “typical fake news. Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping declared in late September that the Communist Party’s “strategy for governing Xinjiang must be adhered to for a long time.
In recent years, the Government has sent what is believed to be more than one million Uighur and other Muslim minority Muslims to detention camps in Xinjiang for re-education. The government has described these facilities as “vocational skills education and training centers” for “preventive” counterterrorism and de-radicalization purposes. The Chinese government also said last December that the trainees at these training centers had all graduated. But Western researchers have found that China continues to invest in construction of additional detention camps in Xinjiang.
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