Human Trafficking
Forced labor in China taints the world’s seafood supply chain. PRC-based companies that use the forced labor of Uyghurs and North Koreans process a large amount of seafood for the U.S. market. From fish sticks to calamari—these products end up in the supply chains of major restaurants and wholesalers and in the lunches served at American schools and military bases. Recently published reports by The Outlaw Ocean Project detail how forced labor is rampant in China’s seafood industry, including modern slavery on China’s illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing fleet, and in processing plants located in Shandong province of China—where Uyghurs are employed in labor transfer projects.
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INTRODUCTION
As many as 1.8 million Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and other Muslim minorities are, or have been, arbitrarily detained in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The severe human rights abuses, torture, political indoctrination, forced renunciations of faith, and widespread and systematic forced labor occurring in mass internment camps may constitute crimes against humanity under international law.
The following Chinese text was retrieved on November 18, 2016, from the Chengde Anti-Corruption Public Website.
Refer to this page for a prior version of the PRC Criminal Law, amended on February 25, 2011, and effective on May 1, 2011 (English translation available).
China’s infamous “One-Child Policy” marks its 35th anniversary this year. It has been called the world’s largest social experiment and has had tragic effects on Chinese families and society. Coercive population control policies are also the cause of a demographic time bomb. China has a rapidly aging population, a shrinking labor force, and a dramatic gender imbalance that drives regional human trafficking problems and potentially higher levels of crime and societal instability. China’s central government has started to gently revise its population control policies in the past year, though the overall policy and the huge bureaucracy that enforces it remain intact.
Transcript (PDF) (Text)
In recent weeks, international human rights advocates and organizations have called on the Chinese government not to repatriate dozens of North Korean refugees currently detained in China. There is now growing concern that the refugees and their family members may face public execution if the refugees are forcibly returned to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea).