Thread by @fbermingham

NEW: The World Bank has been accused of “funding a campaign of repression” of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang

New report details almost half a billion dollars lent to companies with deep links to forced labour and other rights abuses

scmp.com/news/china/dip…

Report published by Atlantic Council details lending as recently as 2020 to 4 Chinese companies who "directly participated in":

• state-sponsored forced labor programs,
• compulsory land expropriation,
• programs that require minoritized citizens to take oaths to the CCP

The World Bank's International Finance Corporation is one development finance institute with links to Xinjiang.

Others include Asian Development Bank, European Investment Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Dutch and German state-owned DFIs

European lawmakers including @bueti, @MiriamMLex, @barrymward among the @ipacglobal members to have signed a letter to World Bank chief David Malpass today to call for full World Bank withdrawal from Xinjiang

One example: In 2019, the IFC lent US$40 million to Chenguang Biotech Group to support working capital. Company is a supplier of plant-based extracts and additives with a host of American clients including Pure & Green Life and Mb Supplements

Researchers found job advertisements for admin positions in Chenguang’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Xinjiang Chenxi Pepper Industry Co, were required to be of “Han ethnicity”.

The company built facilities in Yarkant, a county in southern Xinjiang, “with the specific intent to ‘recruit poor labourers first’ through state-sponsored poverty alleviation and labour transfer schemes”, the report read.

Such labour recruitment programmes were “typically state sponsored and coercive assignments of impoverished people in low-skill/low-wage jobs, often against their will”, they added.

Another example: Camel Group Co, one of China’s largest battery manufacturers & supplier to Volkswagen, Ford, Audi and GM, borrowed US$81 million from the IFC and its private sector lending partners in 2019 to build recycling plants and upgrade existing Xinjiang facilities

Researchers found a “major gap in reporting” on the IFC’s strict environmental standards pertaining to the facilities, with due diligence failing to focus on “the risks specific to battery breaking or secondary smelting”.

Camel took part in “poverty alleviation” programmes in Xinjiang, including controversial labour transfer schemes

Uyghur workers recruited by Camel received “military and ideological training, and they were required to sing patriotic songs and learn the Chinese language”.

Such activities were billed as “closed pre-job training”, which “indicates that the participants were not allowed to come and go freely from the training”, they wrote.

scmp.com/news/china/dip…