Production of PPEs: China’s forced labour

As most of the world is still in the midst of a dangerous global pandemic, the demand to personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves and face masks couldn’t be higher. One such country which is actively trying to take advantage of this unexpected demand would be the People’s Republic of China (PRC), however the methods they’re utilizing to run their figurative manufacturing machine are extremely questionable at best.

It has been reported by several reliable sources (including the UN Human Rights Commission for China) that Chinese factories and other industrial infrastructures, namely those producing PPEs like face masks and protective gloves are using forced labour, which mostly consists of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. Uyghurs are a mostly-muslin ethnic group hailing from the Xinjiang region of western China who have been systematically vilified and unjustly persecuted by the autocratic Chinese regime under the questionable justification of “national security”.

It should be noted that innocent Uyghurs have been held in Chinese regime controlled internment camps and “re-education centers” for minor so-called “crimes” such as growing a beard or practicing religious beliefs. Additionally, Chinese security forces have regularly practiced collective punishment against Uyghur civilians. This is clearly an active attempt by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) destroy Uyghur culture as a whole. Recently, close to 80,000 of these people have been forcefully relocated from their homeland and been put to work in the Chinese production machine to generate PPE for consumers.