Stephan Wöllenstein, the company’s China chief, says that Volkswagen is ‘concerned’ about the situation in Xinjiang, but adds: ‘I don’t think that to steal away from the region would solve the political problems.’
Given the central importance of the Chinese market for Volkswagen, there is a certain crude economic logic at work here, despite the car giant's, um, unfortunate history with slave labour.
But now evidence emerges of more direct German involvement in the exploitation of Uighur slave labour:
German companies are supplying the technical backbone for the vast textile industry in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, where at least half a million members of the persecuted Uighur minority have allegedly been forced to labour in the cotton fields.
Leaked trade figures from the Chinese customs authority underline the extent of Germany’s commercial entanglement in the region despite numerous claims of human rights abuses and “cultural genocide”.
Investigations by researchers and foreign activists have suggested that more than a million of Xinjiang’s mostly Uighur Muslims have been held in detention camps without due legal process. There have been reports of rape, torture, forced sterilisation, the destruction of dozens of mosques and shrines, and “cotton gulags” in which Uighurs are compelled to work in degrading conditions for little or no pay. Xinjiang produces about a fifth of the world’s cotton….
Germany has come under pressure over its trade with Xinjiang. Customs data obtained by the South China Morning Post show that sales of German parts for textile machines to Xinjiang rose thirtyfold over the past three years, to £30 million. No other country sold more than £500,000 worth.
Not just "cultural genocide" in inverted commas….actual genocide.
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