Sheffield Researcher of Uyghur Forced Labor Says CBP Too Cooperative With Importers
Sheffield Hallam University professor of human rights and contemporary slavery Laura Murphy said CBP needs much more funding to enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, because she does not think companies will cut their ties immediately to China's Xinjiang province as a result of the new law. Murphy, who was interviewed by Hudson Institute senior fellow Nury Turkel on March 9, said she has not yet found a company with production in Xinjiang that can provide clear evidence that it does not employ Uyghur workers who were coerced into taking their jobs.
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"It needed to have funding attached to it. Because it’s going to be a lot of work," she said. A few hours after her interview, the House passed a spending bill for the current fiscal year that included $27 million for UFLPA implementation.
Murphy said she was on a call attended by members of the trade community and CBP officials recently, and that CBP talked about being in partnership with industry. "To me, it sounded like we, a law enforcement agency, are in partnership with criminals," she said.
She criticized companies that are asking for specific guidance on the evidence they need to prove their goods were not made with forced labor. "I think people should stop looking for loopholes and … just understand the spirit and the meaning of the law. Get out of there."
The UFLPA does not only apply to U.S. companies that contract directly with factories in Xinjiang, it also applies to Chinese factories that accept transfers of Uyghur workers and to foreign goods that have Uyghur inputs, such as cotton or polysilcon. Murphy noted that Chinese companies would often publicize they were helping with "poverty alleviation" by accepting workers from Xinjiang, but then when her researchers find those webpages, the company's entire website disappears.
Murphy predicted that in order for the UFPLA to really diminish U.S. demand for products made with Uyghur forced labor, "CBP is going to need to visibly and frequently stop products that are not the expected products," she said. The expected products are products already subject to withhold release orders -- tomatoes, cotton and polysilicon. "A lot of industries are going to be quite surprised," she said. But she said they shouldn't be, because companies should know if they have exposure to Xinjaing.
"Companies should know where the raw materials for their goods come from. They claim they don’t. They should. There’s just no excuse," she said.
Turkel asked why companies have been so quick to pull out of Russia, when abuse of Uyghurs has been known for years. Murphy said that companies are motivated by financial risk with Russia, and that in the case of China, when attention began to be drawn to Uyghur internment camps, China made it easier to do business in Xinjiang.
"The Chinese government has essentially captured the market on so many goods we buy around the world," she said. She said there are very few things you can buy that do not have some Chinese component. As a result, she said, many companies feel they can't source outside China, and they can't anger China by being vocal about its abuses.
Murphy said that for the last few years she has tried to only buy used goods or homemade things so she can avoid Chinese imports, "because I’ve realized the actual human cost" of forced labor in supply chains.