[ad_1]
It is possible that Chinese goods made by an organization linked to the mass arrest of Muslims in Xinjiang have gone to U.S. stores and consumers. according to a report released on Tuesday.
The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps is a broad governmental and paramilitary organization with interests in many industries, and administers some of the mass camps and prisons confined by the Muslim minority. BuzzFeed News found last month that China had built the capability of imprisonment more than a million people in the region at any given time.
The Chinese government has in the past raised the impulse to arrest as a professional development or education program aimed at dispelling threats to social stability. But the US and other governments have called it genocide. Last July in the US he imposed sanctions organization, XPCC or bingtuan in Chinese, as well as two related officials, citing “their connection to serious human rights violations against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.”
This move outlawed anyone in the U.S. doing business with the XPCC and made it more difficult for organizations to work with other countries as well. But new nonprofit-based research based in Washington, DC shows that many XPCC subsidiaries continue to export goods around the world. According to the report, some consumer goods made with these products, such as tomato sauce or textiles, are sold in the United States, as well as in other countries such as Australia, Canada and Germany.
C4ADS, a global conflict and security reporting group, identified 2,923 subsidiaries of the XPCC and used business files, trade records and publications at a Chinese cotton industry shopping center to investigate business activities.
The group saw a Russian company called Grand Star make tomato products and sauces under the Kubanochka brand. Two XPCC subsidiaries, Xinjiang Guannong Tomato Products and Xinjiang Wanda Co., have shipped more than 150 Grand Star tomato paste shipments.
The report found companies that buy goods from Xinjiang and ship them elsewhere, but trade data does not make it clear whether the specific items banned came to the US. So it’s hard to know whether the same tomatoes imported from Xinjiang were later shipped to the U.S., but it’s clear that Kubanochka-branded tomato products are sold in the U.S., including in international grocery stores. The Grand Star did not respond to a request for comment.
C4ADS has also found that at least three XPCC subsidiary companies sell XPCC cotton despite being part of the Better Cotton Initiative, in a global industry accreditation program that claims to promote the ethical supply of cotton products. The Better Cotton Initiative questioned whether the activities of these companies were in line with its principles.
One of the three subsidiaries, Xiamen ITG, is a supply chain management company worth nearly 14 billion Yuan. According to government trade data collected by Panjiva, Xiamen ITG and its subsidiaries have supplied small and large retailers in North America, including a company called Walmart Canada and an Ohio company called MMI Textiles, a military supply that also supplied protective equipment to hospitals. Xiamen ITG sent two shipments of polyester and cotton fabric to MMI in 2019, according to trade data, before the US began blocking Xinjiang cotton. Asked about the shipments, MMI Textiles CEO Nick Rivera said he stopped working with the company in January 2019 and that MMI was “disgusted to find out the details you described in your consultation”.
Founded in 1954 – five years after the Communist Party came to power in China – it initially focused on relocating Chinese migrants to the Xinjiang region, the historic headquarters of Uighur and mostly Muslim minority groups. About 86% of the current members of the XPCC are Chinese, according to research Published by Yajun Baok at Oxford University. The XPCC is so powerful that Bao and other scholars have described it as having a parallel role with the Xinjiang regional government, with interests ranging from cotton cultivation to television and radio. The XPCC has thousands of subsidiaries and accounts for 21% of regional production, including through manufacturing.
“The XPCC is the main perpetrator of mass arrests and forced labor in Xinjiang, and has a large economic footprint,” said Irina Bukharin, lead researcher on the C4ADS report. “It is also punishable, so it is important to understand how it is still linked to the world economy in order to understand how sanctions and other measures are being imposed on forced labor in the region.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection in January he said he would be arrested All tomato and cotton products imported from Xinjiang. C4ADS found, however, that both types of products can reach the United States including by traveling from third countries. XPCC It is the largest producer of cotton in China and is also a major player in the tomato industry.
Arresting regional shipments is not always a clear process, partly because XPCC companies often sell their products through central companies in China or other countries. Ana Hinojosa, a Customs and Border Protection official, told BuzzFeed News that the difficulty in obtaining information about companies in Xinjiang poses a challenge for U.S. regulators.
“XPCC is a giant of an organization. It has so many affiliates, and they change and change frequently, “said Hinojosa, CBP’s chief executive officer of CBP’s commercial remedies law.” It’s hard to keep track of them. “
“I think there are probably some goods coming to the US that we still don’t know are connected to the XPCC,” he added.
XPCC did not respond to requests for comment.
[ad_2]
Source link
