“We are committed to upholding international labor standards globally,” said Nike spokeswoman

8-14-17  The campaign began quietly.  Students studying abroad were told to return home.  Many did, and their classmates didn’t hear from them afterwards.  For those who needed extra incentive to get moving, police detained their families back home.  Finally the ones who refused to comply were rounded up by force.  China is seeking out and recalling members of its ethnic Uighur minority population scattered across the globe.  https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/china-forcing-uighurs-abroad-return-home-why-arent-more-countries

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2-29-20   Along the side the facility resembles a prison.  There are watchtowers with cameras pointed in all directions and barbed-wire fences atop the walls, which feature Communist Party propaganda posters extolling President Xi Jinping’s “China dream.”  “All ethnicities are united as one family,” says one placard.

  There is a special police station equipped with facial-recognition cameras and other high-tech surveillance that workers must pass through when they enter and exit the factory.

  Uighurs are segregated from Han workers, both physically and by language, according to more than a dozen local merchants and workers who spoke to the Post about the situation inside the factory.

  “They don’t speak Mandarin, and we never have any interaction.  We just happen to work in the same factory,” said one middle-aged Han woman as she left work for the day.  “We have two cafeterias,” she said.  “Chinese workers eat in one and Xinjiang workers go to a separate one. Uighur workers are allowed to wander around near the compound but have to return to their dorms later.”

  The workers live under the watchful eye of their cadre manager in dormitory buildings opposite the police station.   Security at the factory is tight.  Factory administrators told a Post reporter this was a Nike requirement — Nike inspectors were visiting that day — but locals said it was also to monitor the Uighur workers.

  “Some would say they use national-level security standards,” one of the street vendors said.  “They keep a detailed account of the workers’ entries and exits, and they have to obey a strict schedule, coming to work or leaving the compound only at specific hours.”

  Taekwang did not respond to questions about whether the Uighurs were forced to work in the factory under threat of reeducation nor whether they could pray or observe religious practices while working at the factory….

  Asked about Uighur workers in the factory, Nike said that “we respect human rights in our extended value chain, and always strive to conduct business ethically and responsibly.”  “We are committed to upholding international labor standards globally,” said Nike spokeswoman Sandra Carreon-John, adding that its suppliers are “strictly prohibited from using any type of prison, forced, bonded or indentured labor.”

   “The purpose of bringing in migrant Xinjiang workers (in addition to other migrant Han Chinese workers) is to offset local labor shortage, due to increasing number of competing industries for workers in our area,” Kim managing a Nike factory said in a statement. 

  Uighur workers are afraid or unable to interact with anyone in this town, north of Qingdao, beyond the most superficial of transactions at the stalls or in local stores, vendors say.  But the catalyst for their arrival here is well understood.

  “Everyone knows they didn’t come here of their own free will.  They were brought here,” said one fruit-seller as she set up her stall.  “The Uighurs had to come because they didn’t have an option.  The government sent them here,” another vendor told the Washington Post.  

  Kim Jae-min, chief executive of Taekwang, the factory’s South Korean parent company, said about 600 Uighurs were among 7,100 workers at the plant.  Nike’s manufacturing map shows that the factory has 4,095 employees, of whom 3,445 are “line workers.”   https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-compels-uighurs-to-work-in-shoe-factory-that-supplies-nike/2020/02/28/ebddf5f4-57b2-11ea-8efd-0f904bdd8057_story.html