Dressing Up Oppression
Fashion brands face backlash over use of Uighur cotton
Reports of Uighur mistreatment continue to pile up as major brands deny use of forced labour in the cotton industry. Meanwhile, China insists its Xinjiang camps are merely deradicalizing Uighurs.
Major clothing brands have been suspected of using cotton harvested by Uighur forced labourers, in the hundreds of camps set up for so-called deradicalization. 'When I see these clothes, I see the blood of the Uighurs who are taken away from their families and forced to make [them]', says one Uighur man. His mother took part in a European protest against the oppression of Uighurs. He suspects this is why his uncle in China was arrested - and has since vanished. 'He hasn't done anything wrong but breathe and live'. In Utrecht, a woman who taught Chinese inside a camp details her experience. '[The students] have no books, no chair, no desk. The main purpose of the Chinese with these camps is to lock up all the Uighurs, their goal is to simply get rid of the Uighur culture'.
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