Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) introduced legislation on Thursday that would require the Treasury Department to use U.S. representatives at international organizations to pressure those organizations not to fund slavery around the world, particularly the Chinese government's genocidal slavery of the Uighur people.
The Forced Labor Funding Prohibition Law specifically addresses the detention of millions of Uighurs in mass internment camps in occupied East Turkestan (a region that the Chinese Communist Party has renamed the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR)), where they have endured a host of brutalities, including enslavement. It is estimated that China has imprisoned as many as three million people from East Turkestan in these camps.
Amid growing international scrutiny, the Chinese Communist Party began calling the camps “vocational education and training” centers and claiming that most students had “graduated” in 2019. A year later, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) released a landmark report: Selling the Uighurs It details how China bussed Uighur slaves out of the camps and sold them to factories across the country, while Beijing claimed to have closed the camps but continued to exploit them and shielded the supply chain from foreigners who sought evidence of human rights abuses.
Forced labor is “Slavery in the 21st CenturyAccording to most international legal scholars, “ethnic discrimination in China” remains widespread in the country, particularly affecting the indigenous people of East Turkestan.
If passed, the Forced Labor Financing Act would give the U.S. government the power to take action against funding businesses that profit from slavery, particularly in China. Bill At the time of publication, the document called for the Secretary of the Treasury to “direct U.S. directors of international financial institutions to oppose projects that use forced labor.”
“In 2022, the Atlantic Council released a report detailing how the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank's private lending arm, determined that several of the corporation's clients were actively participating in the People's Republic of China's campaign against Uighur people and Uighur culture in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,” the bill notes.
The U.S. representatives as such agencies would be legally obligated to oppose funding for projects “carried out by state-owned or heavily state-influenced entities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China” due to the prevalence of slavery in the region. But the requirement to oppose projects tainted by slavery or that are at high risk of benefiting from forced labor is not limited to China, but applies to all such projects around the world.
According to a press release issued by Senators Rubio and Merkley, the bill would also require relevant representatives to “describe how they screen projects for forced labor risks and what steps they are taking to mitigate, track, and reverse those risks.”
The Treasury Department will also have to submit annual reports for at least the next five years on any projects that carry slavery risks that the agencies in question approved despite U.S. opposition.
“Forced labor is a horrific practice witnessed around the world, including in China, where the Chinese Communist Party continues its grotesque genocidal campaign against the Uighurs and other ethnic minorities,” Sen. Rubio said in a statement Thursday. “We have a moral obligation to ensure that our nation is not tied to any purchases tainted by forced human labor.”
Senator Merkley asserted, “Our tax dollars should not inadvertently be used to support projects that use forced labor…We need to send a strong message against slave labor wherever this evil appears.”
The bill builds on a growing body of legislation opposing the ongoing genocide against Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and non-Han Chinese in East Turkestan, most notably the Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). The UFLPA, which took effect in 2022, bans the importation of goods originating in East Turkestan into the United States unless the importer can prove that the products in question are not tainted by slave labor.
While the rebuttable presumption of slavery created by the act was a major step forward in addressing the genocide in East Turkestan, Chinese companies have subsequently discovered major loopholes in the UFLPA's scrutiny. Very little The exception allows US authorities to exempt shipments worth less than $800 from inspection to ensure they comply with the law. Very little The exception also allows these shipments to avoid millions of dollars in customs duties and other import fees.
“Chinese companies like Tem and Shain are exploiting loopholes in U.S. law to avoid duties and liability for their ties to slave labor,” Senator Rubio said. Introduced “Shein and Temu are “fast fashion” companies that sell low-quality clothing at deep discounts. Temu also sells a variety of other products, including art supplies and household goods,” a UFLPA official told Breitbart News in February.
Senator Rubio introduced the Import Security and Fairness Act. Very little She and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) are campaigning to close the loophole. The bill has yet to come up for a vote in Congress. Democrats have called on President Joe Biden to close the loophole through executive order, but he has not yet done so.
