ILO to Investigate Xinjiang Concentration Camps

On June 12th, the International Labor Organization (ILO) decided at its main annual conference, to send a “technical advisory mission” to China to assess the issues of discrimination against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.

At the ILO annual conference, which lasted more than two weeks, a committee tasked with assessing China’s compliance with global labor practices, heard allegations of systemic labor abuses, particularly against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. In its conclusion, the committee said it “deplored the use of all repressive measures against the Uyghur people, which has a discriminatory effect on their employment opportunities and treatment as a religious and ethnic minority in China.”

The committee made a long list of recommendations to the Communist Chinese authorities, including an immediate cessation of discriminatory practices against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, such as detention or imprisonment on racial and religious grounds for deradicalization purposes.

The committee urged the Communist Chinese Government to accept a mission of technical advisers from the ILO to China and asked the government to report by September 1st, on how it implemented labor conventions to prevent employment discrimination. In February this year, 20 United Nation (UN) labor experts expressed their “deep concern” about the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities in China after they assessed the International Trade Union Confederation’s 2020 year-end report. The report noted that the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang were systematically forced to work in agriculture.