Non-governmental organizations and a Uyghur survivor have filed a legal complaint in France against four multinational garment companies. They accuse fashion companies Inditex, Uniqlo, SMCP and athletic shoe manufacturer Skechers of profiting from forced labor imposed on China's Turkic-speaking Uyghur Muslim minority....
Zara parent company Inditex, Japanese fashion chain Uniqlo, SMCP (Sandro, Maje, ...) and athletic shoe manufacturer Skechers are accused in the legal action of "covering up forced labor and crimes against humanity." The complaint was filed by the anti-corruption association Sherpa, the collective Ethique sur l'étiquette, the "Uyghur Institute of Europe" (IODE) and a Uyghur woman interned in Xinjiang province (northwest China).
Based on a report published in March 2020 by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), an Australian non-governmental organization, on the use of forced labor by the Uighur minority, the plaintiffs are calling on the French judiciary to investigate these companies. This is because the companies "continue to outsource part of their production there or market goods with cotton produced in the region," making them complicit in the serious crimes committed there, the statement said.
Many countries, including the United States, speak of a "genocide" of which the Uyghurs are presumed victims. Human rights organizations accuse Beijing of interning more than one million of them in political re-education centers since 2017. The communist regime denies this figure and asserts that these are "vocational training centers" designed to turn Uyghurs away from Islamism and separatism after a series of attacks were attributed to them. read more