On July 19, 2023, some three and a half years after the publication of a lengthy New York Times report on leaked internal Chinese government documents recounting persecution of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, Reuters published an article with a headline stating that “Volkswagen [is] convinced Xinjiang audit [of its plant in Xinjiang] will provide insight on human rights situation.”
Critics wonder how Volkswagen can ensure that the projected audit of its plant in Xinjiang will be independent “given heavy-handed censorship in the region and China’s anti-espionage laws.”
In June 2023, Reuters reported that “Germany’s top carmakers were challenged by a Berlin-based rights group on Wednesday over the extent of their due diligence to prevent forced labour in their supply chain, as Volkswagen said it would conduct an audit at its plant in Xinjiang.”
Since January 1, 2023, companies in Germany above a certain size must establish due diligence procedures, including an annual risk analysis, that prevent human rights and environmental abuses within their global supply chains.
UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people, mainly Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, have been detained in recent years in a vast system of camps in China’s western Xinjiang region. Researchers and rights groups say the camps have been used as a source for low paid and coercive labour.
China denies all accusations of abuse.
It would take Volkswagen ten minutes to print out the New York Times article about the leaked documentation of the genocide of the Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang. And there are many other sources of unimpeachable information about the human rights situation in Xinjiang. But one must suspect that Volkswagen officials having anything to do with the company’s Xinjiang plant already know all this.
Smithsonian Magazine observes:
Forced labor awaits many who survive the reeducation camps. According to a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred from Xinjiang to factories across China between 2017 and 2019. At these factories, they were subjected to constant surveillance, a ban on religious activities and ideological training outside of work hours.
The Xinjiang provincial government pays local governments a price per head to organize labor assignments. More than 80 companies benefit from this forced labor, including Adidas, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Calvin Klein and BMW. The Uyghurs being placed in factories or farms are essentially enslaved, Kikoler says. They have no freedom of movement or rights to visit family, and they face surveillance and further reeducation.
It seems that an audit of the human rights situation in Xinjiang and Xinjiang’s plants has already been done to the extent possible. The question for Volkswagen and other foreign companies is not how to find information about pervasive persecution of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, but whether to be complicit in it.
