Uighurs forced to keep China running at height of Covid-19 pandemic
Workers were moved by train and plane to key industrial cities to maintain production lines
Shocking evidence has emerged that, at the height of China’s coronavirus lockdown, when factories were brought to a standstill by quarantine and travel restrictions, the Chinese Communist Party resorted to forced labour among Uighurs to keep production lines running.
Despite the dangers posed to their lives by the rampaging pandemic, Uighur workers from the predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang were packed into trains with blacked-out windows and herded on to special charter flights to be transferred to key technology and textile factories.
The coronavirus labour shipments were the latest phase in the exploitation of the Uighurs as Beijing exported nationwide the model of forced labour already deployed in Xinjiang.
The transfers bolstered China’s economic rebound from the ravages of Covid-19 – touted by President Xi