Over the past year, Human Rights Watch has investigated forced labor in Xinjiang, a region in northwestern China where Chinese government labor transfer programs coerce Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims away from their homes and into jobs in factories and warehouses. Uncovering the products and materials linked to forced labor, from the aluminum in cars to the polysilicon in solar panels, that enter undetected into global supply chains is extremely challenging.
The difficulties around this work underscore why a new European Union law banning imports and exports linked to forced labor needs specific measures to tackle state-imposed forced labor.