U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Wednesday it will detain all cotton and tomato products produced in China’s Xinjiang province.
The Withhold Release Order (WRO) issued by CBP is based on information that “reasonably indicates” the use of forced labor within China’s so-called “re-education” camps. CBP also claims China is oppressing its Muslim population in that region.
“The goal isn’t just to interdict shipments … that’s actually the fallback plan,” Acting DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli told reporters Wednesday. “The goal of the WRO is that they stop and that the shipments never arrive – the ultimate goal is that China abandons these horrific practices.”
This is the fourth WRO that CBP has issued in 2021 and the second on products originating in Xinjiang. China’s Xinjiang province accounted for eight of the 13 WROs that CBP issued in 2020 – all stemming from allegations of forced labor.
CBP officials and human rights experts estimate that somewhere between 1 million to 3 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and others are being detained in what U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has dubbed “internment camps” throughout China’s Xinjiang province. There are about 1,300 of these facilities scattered throughout the region and they’ve allegedly forced detainees to work without compensation in nearby factories, according to those same officials.
Evidence from Chinese government documents and media reports indicate that hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in Xinjiang are forced to pick cotton by hand via state-mandated labor, according to a report by the Center for Global Policy published last month. The Chinese government strongly denies all claims of forced labor in Xinjiang.
“I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Made in China does not just indicate a country of origin,” said Cuccinelli. “It’s a warning label.”
Cotton is Xinjiang’s largest export; cotton exports from China are approximately a $9 billion industry. Last month, CBP issued a WRO on Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which had accounted for 17% of those cotton exports.
CBP has not yet quantified Xinjiang’s tomato export output, but China’s overall output of tomatoes is a $10 million industry, according to export data from 2019.
CBP officials emphasized on the call Wednesday that most of the onus falls on importers and consumers – urging them to diligently research their supply chains prior to purchasing items from China in general.
“When Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced this week that the federal government would begin releasing coronavirus vaccine doses held in reserve for second shots, no such reserve existed, according to state and federal officials briefed on distribution plans. The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available beginning at the end of December, taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line.
“Now, health officials across the country who had anticipated their extremely limited vaccine supply as much as doubling beginning next week are confronting the reality that their allocations will not immediately increase, dashing hopes of dramatically expanding eligibility for millions of elderly people and those with high-risk medical conditions. Health officials in some cities and states were informed in recent days about the reality of the situation, while others are still in the dark.”
Hi to all, just a reminder that Thatcher specifically fucked Wales in ways that it still hasn’t recovered from, and it’s deeply ignorant to only consider her cultural impact on England and fail to take into account the very real anti-Welsh sentiment which underpinned so much of her economic policy, and the only reason not to piss on Thatcher’s grave is the very real concern that it might put out the fires in which she’s currently burning in Hell.
I have been reliably informed by an Englishman who was a Master’s student in Theology at Cardiff University during the end of Thatcher’s era that she was ‘intelligent, organised and competent,’ which I’m sure comes as an enormously soothing balm to the 1 in 7 Welsh people who lost their jobs, the 1 in 3 people who worked in manufacturing who became unemployed, the people who were made homeless in the wake of her housing policies (the number of homeless people in Wales doubled between 1979-1990 as a result of Thatcher selling off 80,000 council houses and slashing public spending on social welfare), the 22,000 miners who lost their jobs, and everyone in South Wales who lived in mining towns which had been built around an industry which was decimated without any thought paid to their infrastructure or economy.
Still, Bob says that she was competent, and he should know because he studied Theology in Cardiff for 8 months of the year in 1990, so.
“The [Vietnamese] people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs….
At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called “enemy,” I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor. Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now.”
—From the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s historic 1967 speech expressing his opposition to the Vietnam War.
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“Happy Birthday, Dr. King - January 15, 1929“The [Vietnamese] people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/8926b00027cede2627571915bde97a78/tumblr_mzg63miqhj1qap9gno1_500.jpg)
