SUCCESS: Volkswagen to end its complicity with Uyghur forced labour

28 Nov, 2024 | Campaigns, Genocide, Latest

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November 2024

After ten years of operations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Volkswagen is to sell its plants in Xinjiang and end its complicity with Uyghur forced labour and abuses committed against the Uyghurs and other Turkic groups.

Earlier this year, new evidence provided by Dr. Adrian Zens, directly implicated Volkswagen in Uyghur forced labour: The SAIC[1]-The Volkswagen test track in Turpan, Uyghur Region, was built using transferred “Uyghur labourers” in military drill uniforms, where they were subjected to indoctrination, biometric data collection, assimilation and surveillance.

This week Volkswagen announced it will sell its operations in China’s Xinjiang, after years of mounting pressure to abandon its presence in a region where rights groups have documented abuses against the Uyghur population.

Read the full briefing on Volkswagen’s complicity with Uyghur forced labour here.


[1] SAIC Motor Corporation Limited is a China-based company principally engaged in the research and development, manufacturing and distribution of whole vehicles and auto parts.

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Today, 10th December, is International Human Rights Day – the 76th anniversary of the signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. 

 

 

The Declaration was a reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust. So, for Jews, today has a particuar significance. 

Although rooted in response to atrocity, the Declaration was forward-looking and optimistic. It spoke for the majority of people who knew a better world was possible. The fact that it’s co-author , the French-Jewish lawyer Monsieur Rene Cassin, could draft such a hopeful document so soon after 26 members of his family were murdered by the Nazis is a testament to his humanity and the power of human rights in general. 

Today, as the organisation that works in Cassin’s name, we are determined to ensure his Declaration’s vision of human rights for all is fully realised. Central to that work is a focus on so called ‘socio-economic rights’ – rights to everyday essentials like food, housing and health. This vision was best articulated in Article 25 of the Declaration: 

‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control’.

Bolstering these rights would ensure everybody has access to the foundations on which to build a dignified, prosperous and meaningful life. They have been neglected for too long.

 

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