An accidental Chinese report reveals that Beijing implemented a labor transfer program in Xinjiang as an “important method” to reduce the population density of Xinjiang’s Uighur minority and to assimilate the Uighurs. According to international criminal law experts, there are “credible grounds to conclude” that the program violates two Crimes Against Humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) based on the report’s revelations.
Adrian Zenz, a German expert on Xinjiang, published a report at the Jamestown Foundation stating that the labor transfer program is another large-scale forced labor program being carried out by the Chinese government in Xinjiang, in addition to the Xinjiang re-Education camps. The report describes a situation that meets the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) definition of forced labor, and he estimates that 1.6 million surplus rural workers in Xinjiang are at risk of forced labor.
The “Report on Poverty Alleviation through Labor Force Transfer in Xinjiang’s Hotan Region”, published in December 2019 by China’s Nankai University’s “China Institute of Wealth Economics,” has been removed from the official website, but Zheng Guoyen has stored a copy of the report.
The report notes that poverty alleviation is the most fundamental and important way to deal with the problems of the Uyghur region in Xinjiang, “especially through labor export, which both reduces the population density of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region and is an important way to sensitize, melt and assimilate minority Uyghur personnel” and “allow them to work in a changed environment and Life, in the labor work, gradually change their thoughts and understanding, and reform their values and outlook on life.”
While the report emphasizes the “voluntary” nature of the labor transfer program, it also provides implementation details such as targets for the number of workers to be exported and the need for accompanying security guards to manage the program.
International criminal law expert Erin Farrell Rosenberg said there are “credible grounds” to believe that Xinjiang’s labor transfer program violated two of the Rome Statute’s crimes against humanity. “In particular, there is ample evidence that the Chinese government is carrying out a widespread and systematic attack on the Uyghurs” and that “the two crimes against humanity of forced relocation and persecution are taking place.
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