Hawzah News Agency (Xinjiang - China) - China is using the Muslim Uyghur minority as forced labor in factories that supply brands such as Nike, Uniqlo, Zara, and other retail giants, according to a new shocking report.

The Uyghur minority have have been sent to camps for years where are used as forced labor, for far more than just so-called “reeducation” purposes, according to a new bombshell report of Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank based on Australia.

At least 80,000 Uyghurs from Xinjiang camps were relocated into factories across the country by the Chinese government between 2017 and 2019. They are being employed as forced labor under grueling conditions at factories that supply at least 83 international companies producing everything from shoes to electronics, according to the report.

The report did not only document factories using forced Uyghur labor but also unveiled a list of companies which includes several well-known brands such as Apple, Nike, Amazon, Samsung, Zara, H&M, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, Uniqlo, among others.

Factory audits became widespread after Nike’s child-labor scandals in 1990s, but this research revealed the failure of audit systems to detect labor abuses although most of those big brands claimed to abide by supplier codes of conduct prohibiting the use of forced labor and to carry out strong audit authority.

Although Nike states “The supplier does not use forced labor, including prison labor, indentured labor, bonded labor or other forms of forced labor,”, the report make clear it that about 600 workers from Xinjiang were employed at Qingdao Taekwang Shoes Co. Ltd., one of Nike’s largest suppliers.

The report also showed that auditing industry prioritizes protecting company reputations over workers.

Dorothee Baumann-Pauly, researcher at New York University’s Stern school, criticized auditing industry which protects company reputations more than workers by saying “clearly the auditing methodology is flawed.”

The report revealed some other factory making shoes for Nike located in Laixi to the north of Qingdao in eastern China. Mostly young Uyghur women and teens areforced to work in those factories surrounded by barbed-wire and surveillance cameras.

The report cited also world’s biggest contract manufacturer of electronics company Foxconn which produces iPhones for Apple. Although Apple’s supplier code prohibits involuntary labor of any sort, at least 560 Uighur were forcing to work factories in Henan province, including the Foxconn facility in Zhengzhou, reported by ASPI.