UN Report Finally Acknowledges China’s Forced Labor Programs

Leave it to the United Nations to wait several years before pointing out the blatantly obvious.  With their overt obsession with climate change, one has to wonder how they find any time to address REAL problems in the world, including state sanctioned slavery.  Perhaps they stalled for so long because the nation in question is China?  

A new UN report on contemporary forms of slavery has found it “reasonable to conclude” that forced labor is taking place in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang.  The area has long been criticized by the alternative media as the base of operations for massive slave labor camps which China uses to house undesirables, including millions of native tribal Uyghurs according to human rights groups.  

The reality of concentration camps in China was denied by the CCP spin machine for years, but leaked documents on camp brainwashing programs in 2019 as well as leaked video footage in 2020 have put that question to rest. 

The indoctrination programs used by China are common practice among communist countries, which view religious beliefs and practices as unacceptable competition to the collectivism and worship of the state.  If a group of people holds something in higher regard than the government (such as God or spiritualism), then they might be harder to control because they believe in something greater than themselves, or greater than their own personal survival.  They become dangerous to the authorities.

The Uyghur programs seem to follow a Mao/Soviet model, which focuses on forced labor, separation of families and elaborate propaganda sessions designed to instill loyalty.   Although, there is  some evidence that the camps also use the threat of torture and death as a means to inspire compliance.  

The programs also appear to be an extension of the ethnic cleansing efforts used by China to pacify and absorb Tibet after invading militarily in 1949.  China’s modus operandi is to claim that the regions they ethnically cleanse are “already a part of China” even when they are clearly separate, not only by geography and national boundaries but by culture.  Claiming historic ownership is their way of justifying their actions.  Again, this is typically communist.  

In a report released on Tuesday, a UN special rapporteur, Tomoya Obokata, said that evidence pointed to forced labor “among Uygur, Kazakh and other ethnic minorities in sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing”.  The UN has not adopted the report as their official position, which is not surprising, but it is one of the first incidents of the UN openly acknowledging the CCP’s forced labor operations.

The Chinese government was quick to dispute the rapporteur’s findings, accusing Obokata of “abusing his authority” to “malignly smear and denigrate China and serve as a political tool for anti-China forces”.

“We solemnly urge [a] certain special rapporteur to immediately change course, respect plain facts, observe the mandate of the Human Rights Council and code of conduct of the special procedure, perform duty in a fair and objective manner,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a news briefing in Beijing on Wednesday.   “There has never been forced labor in Xinjiang,” he added.  

Here we have another very typical communist reaction to being caught red handed (no pun intended), which is to play the victim and then gaslight the people that are pointing out their criminality.

China argues that labor programs were actually meant to “combat radicalism” and “fight terrorism,” though they have offered no legitimate evidence of either.  The CCP also suggests that camps produce workers that are “paid,” though this claim has been refuted by prisoners and insider leaks.  Whether paid or not, all the evidence shows that Uyghurs and other groups are indeed separated from their families and shipped out against their will to work in Chinese factories. 

Beyond exposing the horrible practices of the Chinese government, the slave labor and concentration camp issue illustrates the much bigger problem of collectivist systems and their natural propensity to devolve into brutal dictatorship.

This is the eventual end path of every socialist/communist model; it is not as if China is being compelled by circumstances to round these people up, to torture them or use them as slave labor.  There is no direct threat to China.  Rather, the CCP and other collectivist governments see ideas as threats, because ideas and beliefs outside of state doctrine offer CHOICES, and the power of choice is the ultimate silver bullet to the monster of collectivism.  Choice is death for authoritarians, so all choice must be eliminated.