A new report indicates that the main Chinese producers of critical minerals use forced labor programs imposed by the State in the Uighur region to meet growing global demand, putting the international marks to which they export at risk of complicity in human rights violations.
According to the report of the Hague Global Rights Compliance Rights group, 77 companies and manufacturers downstream of critical minerals operate in the Uighur autonomous region of Xinjiang (Xuar), placing them at risk of participation in work transfer programs in the lithium, titanium, beryllium and magnetium industries.
The results are likely to add the reasonable concerns of foreign and multinational companies that obtain these products. Forced work is on a long list of serious human rights problems that have been documented in the Xinjiang, where the US government determined in 2021 that China was committing a genocide against ouighours.
The Uighur region is a major source of four critical minerals. It is the main source of Béryllium, crucial for nuclear applications and advanced electronics, and one of the five jurisdictions in the province that produce raw magnesium. The region also notes an increase in lithium exploration, mining and battery production to feed the electric vehicle industry, and represents 11.6% of the world titanium sponge, a key entry into the metal titanium which is used in aerospace and defense.
During the last decade, Beijing has widened the exploration, mining, transformation and manufacture of critical minerals in the Xuar, transforming the region into a major “extractive hub”, said the compliance of global rights in its report entitled “Risk at source: critical mineral supply chains and forced work imposed by the state in the region of Uyghur”.
China dominates global mineral production. The country conducts the production of 30 of the 44 minerals that the American government has appointed criticism.
“The emergence of the region as an extractive center is based, in part, on the forced labor transfer programs imposed by the State, targeting Uighurs and other Turkish ethnic groups,” said the rights group.
The report highlights “the substantial influence” that these critical minerals – found abundantly in Xuar – have on global supply chains and multinational brands, in particular the main paint companies, aerospace applications, thermos producers and defense and nuclear components and components.
He discovered 15 companies with a documented source directly from companies in the Uighur region in the past two years and 68 customers downstream from Chinese producers who provide contributions from the Uighur region, highlighting the risk of direct and indirect participation of companies in forced labor programs.
“Xuar systemic systemic systemic practices are not only a means of subsidizing operating costs, but also to facilitate the government's persecution of the Uighur population by family separation, land expropriation and forced rehabilitation,” said Global Rights Alliance.
The report stresses that Chinese practices in the Uighur region create unjust competitive advantages and commercial and environmental violations that extend beyond the concerns of human rights.
Laxist environmental standards and the high dependence on coal have also made the region the epicenter of the mineral industry and transformation with high energy intensity and have enabled markets to enter the global markets at artificially low prices, he said.
“The minerals exploited and / or refined in the region regularly enter global supply chains through non -regulated or opaque mineral distribution channels.
The results of the report were based on state media analyzes, delivery files and annual marketing and business reports.
Edited by Mat Pennington.