NCCM Policy Brief: Uyghur Rights

Uyghurs living in China have been subject to widespread human rights abuses for years. 

Among these issues is Beijing’s ongoing mistreatment of the Uyghur minority in the Uyghur region of China, including the subjecting of interned individuals to forced labour. The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) is calling on the Canadian government to ramp up efforts to ban the import of goods stemming from forced Uyghur labour in China.  

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) human rights abuses aimed at Uyghur communities in the Uyghur region are widespread and systematic. The forced assimilation of Uyghur Muslims is amounting to what human rights groups now see as ethnic cleansing and genocide. 

According to Amnesty International, this has involved the internment of Uyghurs in nearly 1,200 camps, and cases of forced labour under the threat of physical violence, sexual abuse and torture. Forced labour conditions include restrictions on the movement of laborers, debt bondage, constant digital surveillance, forced isolation, forced sterilization, abusive working conditions, and the withholding of wages, according to the U.S. Department of State. 

Sign our petition today to recommend Canada pass Bill S-211 with amendments that incorporate the prohibition on goods from East Turkestan (Xinjiang) set out in Bill S-204 (which specifically addresses China). In addition, NCCM recommends providing an exception in the event that companies can prove their products are not tainted with forced labour, as is done in the American model.

Read our policy brief here.

Sign our petition here.