Uyghur Rights Leader Demands Action Against Forced Labour In Election Manifestos

A leading Uyghur human rights campaigner has urged both the Conservatives and Labour to include legislation in their party manifestos to ban the import of goods connected with forced labour.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has committed a series of human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in the Chinese autonomous region of Xinjiang, incarcerating an estimated one million Turkic muslims, including Uyghurs, in internment camps since 2014, subjecting them widespread forced labour, suppressing religious practices, and carrying out forced sterilisation, contraception, and abortion.

Rahima Mahmut is the UK director of World Uyghur Congress, the executive director of the charity Stop Uyghur Genocide, an adviser to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, and works as a singer and interpreter. She was among a group of activists who were honoured by the King at a reception at Buckingham Palace in November last year to recognise British contributions to global humanitarian efforts.

The leading activist told PoliticsHome that this year, her focus is to do everything she can to persuade the UK government to tackle the importing of goods connected with Uyghur slave labour and the abuse of technology by the Chinese state. The production of solar panels and cotton goods in particular have been connected to the use of forced labour.

“In my opinion the UK government is still sleepwalking, and not really doing much, especially on solar panel procurements,” she said. 

“The UK has become a dumping ground for these goods.” 

Mahmut highlighted legislation in the United States, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), that was enforced in 2021 and put into law that all goods manufactured in Xinjiang are assumed to have been made