Medical masks and protective equipment made by Uighur workers in China have been sold by at least two major distributors in Europe and have been purchased by governments and health institutions in at least five countries, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a transnational nongovernmental organization. (Website screenshot)
The international nonprofit Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Program (OCCRP) released its report Wednesday, revealing that anti-epidemic products made with forced labor by Uighurs from Xinjiang are being sold in many European countries. Human rights groups are urging Western companies and governments to stop buying products that involve forced labor by Uighurs.
Medical masks and protective equipment made by Uighur workers in China have been sold by at least two major distributors in Europe and have been purchased by governments and health institutions in at least five countries, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a transnational nongovernmental organization.
The workers, ethnic Uighurs from China’s western Xinjiang region, were sent to factories in other regions under a controversial “Labour transfer” scheme. Human rights workers say more than one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are sent to re-education camps for forced labor.
The European Parliament has asked the European Union to draw up a list of suspected companies
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting found that some of Europe’s biggest medical distributors, including the multinational giant McKesson and OneMed, a Swedish medical supply company that is Europe’s biggest provider of health products, were selling masks and protective equipment needed to combat the pandemic. Most of the equipment came from Haixing, a Chinese supplier based in Hubei province that until recently employed at least 130 Uighur workers transferred from Xinjiang, according to public documents.
McKessen and OneMed will continue to sell Hubei Haixing products through 2020 even though Haixing has been singled out by media and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) for hiring Uighurs for forced labor. They also sold products made by Zhende Medical, a Listed Chinese company with supply chains and subsidiaries in Xinjiang.
Medical masks and protective equipment made by Uighur workers in China have been sold by at least two major distributors in Europe and have been purchased by governments and health institutions in at least five countries, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a transnational nongovernmental organization. (Website screenshot)
Robert Schmidt, head of operations at OneMed, which sold the masks to the Nordic and Baltic countries, said the company found in late 2019 that the Haixing factory in Hubei had hired workers from Xinjiang but continued its relationship with the manufacturer after finding no evidence of coercion or abuse.
Worried about the Uighur workers, OneMed contacted Haixing in January, according to the documents obtained under the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Scheme. The factory has promised to send them back to Xinjiang when the contract expires in March. In practice, however, these workers were employed until September this year, when pandemic restrictions prevented workers from returning home. OneMed continues to buy the product.
‘Buying products from China that force Uighurs into cheap labor is a public acquiescence to the extreme persecution policy that the Chinese government is pursuing,’ said Dirixati, a spokesman for the World Uighur Congress.
But the Northern European countries that followed the report, whether local governments or hospitals, were wary of becoming accomplices, most of whom were unaware that the factories employed Uighurs persecuted by the Chinese government and were unknowingly using uighurs’ exploited Labour products.
The Hubei Haixing product imported by OneMed is among 100,000 masks shipped to Norway by air and was welcomed in March by Prime Minister Erna Solberg. The company supplied Norway with at least one million masks and 2.3 million pieces of protective clothing.
Haixing’s products are also sold to governments and health authorities in Sweden, Lithuania, Estonia and Denmark. Annette Bj rn, procurement manager for the southern region of Denmark, where hundreds of thousands of surgical caps have been purchased, explained that Denmark is now planning to tighten procurement controls across all regions.
‘We call on the international community to immediately stop importing all products made with forced labor from China,’ Mr. Derrixati said.
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