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"In a new research paper, @adrianzenz casts doubt on the applicability of the rules related to #Uyghur forced labor by the ILO, a U.N. agency, arguing they were mainly drawn up to tackle commercially — not politically — driven exploitation." politico.eu/article/un-rul…
"In other words, Beijing is not primarily looking for cheap labor when its local officials in Xinjiang arrange for Uyghurs to go to work.
Instead, it is a top-down political campaign to make these Uyghurs, collectively presumed by the state to be potential secessionists and terrorists, submit to Communist Party rule.
Zenz makes the ILO definition insufficient in tackling the issue. His research shows that the use of ILO indicators "largely fails" in evaluating the coercive elements in China's system against the Uyghurs."
"Conventional means such as the ILO's forced labor indicator framework," Zenz says in a journal article previewed by POLITICO, "was not designed to evaluate state-sponsored forced labor."
"These indicators were designed to measure forced labor in individual companies or economic sectors. They are largely unsuited to evaluating the key mechanism that underpin state-sponsored forced labor, especially in Xinjiang, ...
... where state goals for coercive mobilization are primarily political."
"State-sponsored forced labor is not readily detected by examining individual workers, especially in highly repressive environments such as Xinjiang where they cannot speak freely," adds Zenz.
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