Seyyed Farshchi, 50, worked refugee ‘relentlessly’ for little pay and threatened to have him sent back to his home country
A Melbourne chiropractor who subjected a vulnerable refugee to forced labour for his own financial gain has urged a judge not to send him to prison.
A county court jury in October found Seyyed Farshchi, 50, guilty of causing a person to remain in forced labour and conducting a business involving forced labour.
Continue reading...Beijing says labour transfers are poverty alleviation tool, but research raises concerns schemes are not voluntary
Xinjiang, a region of north-west China that is about three times the size of France, is an area that has become associated around the world with detention camps. The facilities are referred to by Beijing as vocational education and training centres. But critics say they are used to indoctrinate Uyghurs and other minority ethnic groups with the goal of transforming them into devotees of the Chinese Communist party.
After unrest in the region and a series of riots and violent attacks by Uyghur separatists between 2014 to 2017, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, launched his Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism, leading to the establishment of the camps. The UN has estimated that since then about 1 million people have been detained in these extrajudicial centres.
Continue reading...Energy bill amendment requires large solar energy projects to prove supply chain free of slave labour
The UK risks becoming a dumping ground for the products of forced labour from Xinjiang province in China if it rejects reforms proposed by members of the foreign affairs select committee with cross-party support, ministers have been warned.
An amendment to the energy bill, due to be debated on Tuesday, would require solar energy companies to prove that their supply chains are free of slave labour. The Xinjiang region is the source of 35%-40% of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon, the key raw material in the solar photovoltaic supply chain.
Continue reading...Prosecutors seek compensation for workers kept on cattle ranch owned by German carmaker during dictatorship from 1973 to 1987
Brazil is threatening to take the German carmaker Volkswagen to court over allegations that it used slave labour on a vast ranch in the Amazon, after talks on compensating workers ended without agreement.
Public prosecutors in Brazil are seeking compensation for men who they say were forced to work in “humiliating and degrading” conditions, with no clean water or sanitation, on the Fazenda Vale do Rio Cristalino cattle ranch, which was owned by the company in the northern Pará state, between 1973 and 1987.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Officials took one day to conclude no laws were broken at VK Garment factory and workers say their words were deleted
Thai police have been accused of conducting a “sham” investigation into potential forced labour at a garment factory formerly used by Tesco, after officials took one day to conclude no laws were broken.
The Guardian revealed last month that Burmese workers who produced F&F jeans for Tesco in Thailand reported being made to work 99-hour weeks for illegally low pay in terrible conditions.
Continue reading...Fashion industry told to avoid cotton from Xinjiang, which accounts for 84% of China’s exports of the product
The fashion industry has been told it must wean itself off cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, as a new law comes into force giving US border authorities greater powers to block or seize goods linked to forced labour in China.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which comes into force today, assumes that any product partly or wholly made in Xinjiang, north-west China, is linked to the region’s labour camps. Since 2017, the Chinese authorities have detained as many as one million Uyghurs and subjected them to forced labour.
Continue reading...Traces in shirts and T-shirts appear to contradict German firms’ promises to revise supply chains
Researchers say they have found traces of Xinjiang cotton in shirts and T-shirts made by Adidas, Puma and Hugo Boss, appearing to contradict the German clothing companies’ promises to revise their supply chains after allegations of widespread forced labour in the Chinese region.
Recent reports have suggested more than half a million people from minority ethnic groups such as the Uyghurs have been coerced into picking cotton in Xinjiang, which provides more than 80% of China’s and a fifth of the global production of cotton.
Continue reading...Morrison government wants time to consult business and upgrade IT but campaigners say Australia is lagging other countries
The Morrison government has been accused of stalling action to prevent the importation of goods made using slave labour, as it insists it needs more time to consult business and upgrade IT systems.
Despite repeatedly raising concerns about forced labour practices in China’s Xinjiang region, the government has cited “practical challenges” in a new report explaining why it cannot immediately take up recommendations of a bipartisan committee.
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Continue reading...Tory MPs want ministers to follow health bill amendment banning goods from regions with ‘risk of genocide’
Ministers are looking “sympathetically” at plans to stop the government buying health goods made in China’s Xinjiang province when the health and social care bill returns to the Commons later this month. The move would be a first sign that the government is willing to toughen its approach to authoritarian regimes in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
In an interview at the weekend, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the west still needed to apply pressure on the Chinese government not to support the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading...Supermarket says it will investigate report on forced labour in Tamil Nadu garment chain and ensure improvements are made
Tesco said it has found labour abuses in its garment supply chain in southern India after receiving evidence of widespread forced labour involving migrant women in cotton spinning-mills across Tamil Nadu.
The supermarket said that one of its supply chains is linked to a spinning mill included in a new report by NGOs Somo and Arisa that found evidence across the region of multiple labour abuses including deception, intimidation and threats towards vulnerable female workers, abusive working and living conditions and excessive overtime.
Continue reading...Investigation finds up to 40% of UK solar farms were built using panels from leading Chinese companies
Solar projects commissioned by the Ministry of Defence, the government’s Coal Authority, United Utilities and some of the UK’s biggest renewable energy developers are using panels made by Chinese solar companies accused of exploiting forced labour camps in Xinjiang province, a Guardian investigation has found.
Confidential industry data suggests that up to 40% of the UK’s solar farms were built using panels manufactured by China’s biggest solar panel companies, including Jinko Solar, JA Solar and Trina Solar.
Continue reading...Banned firm Top Glove also supplied NHS hospitals, prompting calls for guarantees on PPE sources
Top Glove, the world’s largest manufacturer of rubber gloves, has been banned from exporting its products from Malaysia to the United States after the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) made a finding that its products are made using forced and indentured labour.
Rubber medical gloves from a Malaysian manufacturer will be seized if they enter the US due to “conclusive evidence” they are being made by workers under conditions of modern slavery, the CBP said.
Continue reading...Archaeologists have discovered foundations of the previously unknown structure in the city’s Letná park
The colossal monument to Joseph Stalin that towered over Prague at the height of the cold war stood as a frightening reminder of the Soviet dictator’s tyranny and communism’s seemingly unshakeable grip on the former Czechoslovakia.
Nearly 60 years after its demolition, the brooding 15.5-metre (51ft) shrine retains a hold on the popular imagination, with locals referring to the now popular meeting point where it once stood as “Stalin’s”.
Continue reading...On the anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trials, 90-year-old Colette Marin-Catherine confronts her past by visiting the Nazi concentration camp in Germany where her brother was killed. As a young girl, she had been a member of the French resistance and had always refused to set foot in Germany. That changes when a young history student named Lucie enters her life. Prepared to reopen old wounds and revisit the terrors of that time, Marin-Catherine offers important lessons
Continue reading...Filmmaker Anthony Giacchino and producer Alice Doyard explain how a young history student persuaded Colette, 90, to visit the German concentration camp where her brother died
The new Guardian documentary, Colette, follows the remarkable story of a former member of the French resistance, as she travels to Germany for the first time to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp where her brother died 75 years ago. Persuaded to go on the journey by history student Lucie, 17, the pair support one another through an emotional journey into the past. “When I cross into Germany I’ll never be the same again,” says Colette, 90.
Continue reading...More than 180 cases traced to garment factory where Uighurs must take up work placements
China’s largest coronavirus outbreak in months appears to have emerged in a factory in Xinjiang linked to forced labour and the government’s controversial policies towards Uighur residents.
More than 180 cases of Covid-19 documented in the past week in Shufu county, in southern Xinjiang, can be traced back to a factory that was built in 2018 as part of government “poverty alleviation” efforts, a campaign that researchers and rights advocates describe as coercive.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Gloves from Malaysian company Top Glove found in NHS supply chain despite multiple allegations of worker exploitation
The UK government has been continuing to source medical gloves used as PPE by frontline healthcare workers from a manufacturer in Malaysia repeatedly accused of forcing its workers to endure “slave-like conditions” in its factories, the Guardian can reveal.
Top Glove, the world’s biggest producer of rubber medical gloves, has faced multiple allegations of exploitation from migrant workers mostly from Bangladesh and Nepal.
Continue reading...Shortage of foreign workers behind plan by producers to employ inmates as a stopgap measure
Prisoners are expected to be put to work on Malaysia’s giant palm oil plantations to make up for an acute labour shortage heightened by the coronavirus pandemic.
But workers’ rights experts have warned that the proposal by the country’s palm oil producers may constitute “institutionalised forced labour” in an industry already accused of widespread abuse and exploitation of workers.
Continue reading...As a lucrative deal with the EU looms the country is rushing to repair its reputation on human rights, which has been plagued by reports of forced labour
An inmate grasps a hefty wooden mallet and smashes it through concrete at his feet, working in the shade of a stately white building that his fellow prisoners are constructing in southern Vietnam.
Police officers in bold green uniforms usher everyone away from the men working in faded, olive and white-striped prison garb.
Continue reading...In securing PPE for NHS staff working on coronavirus frontline, government must not ignore abuse of factory workers, warn activists
The government must not ignore the “slave-like” conditions of migrant workers making rubber medical gloves in Malaysia in its rush to source protective equipment to keep frontline NHS staff safe from coronavirus, human rights groups say.
Malaysia is the world’s largest producer of rubber gloves, but the industry has been accused of grossly exploiting its workforce, mostly impoverished migrants from Bangladesh and Nepal.
Continue reading...