Nov. 22 (UPI) — Homeland Security announced on Friday that it was blacklisting 29 Chinese-based companies under the Uyghur Forced Labor Act, bringing the number of companies banned under the law to 107.
The law was created to punish companies that benefit from ongoing forced labor and crimes against humanity against the minority Uyghur population in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.
According to a report last year by the Congressional Research Service, Uyghurs are pressured by the Chinese government to work in textile, apparel, agricultural, consumer, electronics, and other labor-intensive industries, with those who refuse are punished with detention and other measures.
“Forced labor is a violation of basic human rights,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“The Department of Homeland Security has aggressively enforced the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, preventing goods made through forced labor from entering our country, investigating and exposing more than 100 bad actors, and help American businesses avoid inadvertently profiting from this modern form of slavery.”
Robert Silvers, chair of the Federal Labor Enforcement Task Force, called on individual companies to take responsibility and call out forced labor once they learn about it and resist profiting from it.
“The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act is a powerful tool in the fight against forced labor, and we are using it to its full potential. We urge companies to take responsibility, know their supply chains and act ethically.”
The list of the blacklisted companies can be found here.