Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, windle, or steel. I'm Alexandra Ragi. Today we're discussing

the horrifying situation involving the mass incarceration and forced labor of the Uyghurs, a Muslim

community in Western China. My guest is Penelope Kyrinsis. Penelope is the

Assistant Director of Research at the Workers' Rights Consortium. The WRC investigates and reports

on factories and other workplaces by focusing on off-site interviews with workers so that workers

can speak freely and without fear of reprisal.

They publish reports and have been an engine for significant systemic change in supply chains,

helping to shape the public debate about how to achieve real reform.

Thank you for joining me, Penelope.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

I'm sure most of our listeners are familiar with the overarching story. Weegers have been relocated to internment camps in Western China, banned from observing their religious practices,

and subjected to what has been described euphemistically as re-education. The Chinese government

has said that their actions are designed to combat extremism. But now we're finding

out more about the economic exploitation of this community. Penelope, can you briefly walk us through

what we've learned recently about forced labor in Xinjiang and beyond? It's important to note that

the type of forced labor that we are seeing in the Uighur region is not one of

a few bad apple employers that are subjecting their workers to force labor. What we're seeing is

a systematic state-sponsored form of forced labor that intersects with other forms of repression,

like the ones that you named, including arbitrary detention,

political indoctrination, family separation, forced birth control, and of course, pervasive

surveillance. And so it's also important to recognize that, especially in the context of the

garment and textile sector, forced labor is not only happening in the context of these internment camps.

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