New Sanctions for Xinjiang Firms As Profit Shrinks After Uyghur Slavery Evidence
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Washington and the EU are considering new sanctions against the companies in Xinjiang utilising the slave labor of Uyghur whom Beijing unjustly imprisoned in the concentration camps.
U.S. is now weighing sanctions over the alleged use of forced labor in the production of solar panels.
Communist China’s alleged use of forced labor in production of solar panels and other components in renewable energy is a reason for new sanctions, climate envoy John Kerry told lawmakers Wednesday.
How can you assure us that slave labor coming out of China, where genocide is taking place as we speak, are never a part of the climate solution in the United States? asked Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the senior Republican on the committee.
Mr. Kerry told Mr. McCaul he was absolutely correct to raise the concern.
It is a problem, Mr. Kerry admitted. He cited solar panels that we believe in some cases are being produced by forced labor. Mr. Kerry also listed rare earth minerals produced by Communist China and used in things such as magnets for wind turbines, among other uses.
The solar panels producers depend on Communist China supply networks
Residential, commercial, and utility solar panels rely on photovoltaic cells to absorb and convert sunlight into usable energy. Most PV cells are made with polysilicon components, emphasised Senior Adviser and Scholl Chair in International Business Dr. William Alan Reinsch, a specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The polysilicon components are produced through an industrial furnace process that requires extremely high temperatures. Xinjiang, with some of the cheapest power in China thanks to local abundance of coal, has become home to four of the five largest polysilicon factories in the world.
New sanctions will harm the profitability of Chinese firms on the Western markets. The previous batch shrank the profit by 10 per cent that is US$63 million in 2020.
Work is not voluntary in the concentration camps in Xinjiang, East Turkistan
Beijing regime has at least three million or more Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which Uyghurs call East Turkistan, a major cotton-producing region in China’s northwest. The evidence reviewed by renowned lawyers and specialists that Communist China utilised torture, forced sterilization and cultural and religious suppression as its policy towards Uyghurs.
The government doesn’t want information flowing out of the region and they’ve done a good job of making that difficult, said Mr. Scott Nova, the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium in Washington.
An ethnic Kazakh woman from Xinjiang who fled to Kazakhstan said she was forced to work for a week sewing uniforms in a factory in 2018 after spending almost a year in detention.
Ms. Dina Nurdybai ran a clothing business with 30 employees before she was detained. She said the factory work was not voluntary. She was released after authorities realized she was not on a list of long-term detainees.
If they say they are taking you to a factory, you say ‘yes,’ she said. If you don’t go, they’ll say you have problematic thoughts and persecute you.
Others also have said they or their relatives were coerced to work in factories.