UK to Ban Health Supplies from Chinese Concentration Camp Xinjiang Region over Slave Labour

This photo taken on January 22, 2020 shows workers producing facemasks at a factory in Han
STR/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The British parliament is set to ban the country’s socialised healthcare system from purchasing supplies and medical equipment from the concentration camp Chinese region of Xinjiang.

In an amendment tabled by the government to the upcoming Health and Social Care Bill, the National Health Service (NHS) will be barred from buying materials produced by or involving the use of modern slavery, as has been credibly and frequently alleged of the Xinjiang region of Communist China.

During the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, the British government reportedly sent some £150 million to companies connected to Xinjiang’s slave labour and internment programmes in exchange for personal protective equipment (PPE) and other medical supplies.

Beijing has been accused of orchestrating a genocide of its Uyghur minority, including by the British parliament, with up to three million ethnic minorities such as Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz people believed to have been interned in camps at its peak. Numerous camp survivors have testified about the sterilisation of women, as well as the use of torture, rape, and organ harvesting against those imprisoned in the camps.

The communist regime has denied this, maintaining that the camps were merely “vocational training centres” built to help minority groups succeed in the Chinese economy.

Celebrating the move to block the NHS from purchasing materials or services from Xinjiang, former Conservative party leader and prominent Beijing critic Sir Iain Duncan Smith said that he welcomed the decision, calling it a “breakthrough” for human rights standards.

“In unreservedly welcoming this move by the Health Department I urge all other government departments to do the same as quickly as possible,” Duncan Smith told The Telegraph.

“We will be sending the most powerful signal to those around the world that exploit and terrorise those weaker than themselves that the swords of justice are on their trail.”

While the move by the British government to block materials from Xinjiang was welcomed by campaigners, it remains to be seen how effective such a ban will be at “eliminating” the use of slave labour.

Though the use of slave labour in Xinjiang has been widely publicised, investigations have shown that ethnic minorities from the region have been systematically shipped to factories throughout the so-called Middle Kingdom, meaning that it may be difficult to determine which Chinese manufacturers are not using slave labour.

A study from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in 2020 claimed that Muslim Uyghurs have been used as slave labour in factories producing goods for at least 83 prominent global brands.

The ASPI estimated that over 80,000 Uyghurs were forcibly transferred from Xinjiang to work in factories throughout the country between 2017 and 2019 alone.

It is believed that as a part of the plan to stamp out the use of modern slave labour, the government will compile a “blacklist” of companies believed to be involved in the trade.

Luke de Pulford, chief operating officer of the anti-slavery charity Arise, said: “This is an extremely significant development, easily the most significant piece of supply chain regulation that we have around modern slavery in the UK.”

Questions still remain about how stringent the administration of Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who has described himself as a “fervent sinophile” — will be in cracking down on unethical trade with China, however, as the government is reportedly seeking to rekindle talks with Beijing for a post-Brexit trade deal after negotiations fell apart in 2018 amid a brutal anti-democratic crackdown on the former British colony of Hong Kong.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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