The oppression of Uighur people by the Chinese government and the impact of social media campaigns on multinationals such as Zara and Nike

Abstract

Regardless of the fact that the Uighur people have been facing growing persecution since 2016, the international press has started to deal with this information only recently. This can be explained by the impact of the resonance of social media, which pushed the international press to comment on persecutions happening in China. In fact, Uighurs have been persecuted by the Chinese state for decades and recently it has been revealed by the international press that they are subjected to “political and religious indoctrination, compulsory language education, and industrial training” in an effort to suppress the threat posed by the Uighur people because of their culture, their ethnicity and their religion. Thus, China is being criticized by 39 western countries for creating “camps” in the 21st century and locking up women and men under the pretext of fighting terrorism. In its turn, China claims that its aim is to reeducate Uighur people, through the Global War on Terror, i.e., “GWOT”, politics, by creating reeducation centers, which allegedly provide training and jobs for Uighurs. It is being said that a lot of countries, especially Muslim states, openly support China in their repression of Uighurs.

Simultaneously, social media has played a major part in revealing China’s way of detaining Uighurs in camps and its way of violating human rights. Recently, it has had an important impact among people, especially on Instagram and Twitter, as users have started an Internet ‘war’ on several multinationals by boycotting them and shaming them through social media. In fact, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) over 80 major brands are involved in forced labour and some of them recently agreed to stop using Uighurs forced labour. For instance, companies such as Zara, a company specialized in fast fashion, have become one of the prominent targets. Even though Zara publicly denied allegations of forced labour, no conclusive evidence has been provided.

This being said, under the pressure of increasingly critical consumers, some multinationals have been trying to save their image from the forced labour accusation by claiming that they do not support forced labour. Since 82 major multinationals are involved in the forced labour allegations, a lot of consumers are outraged that powerful brands resort to forced labour. Thus, users accuse them of profiting from forced labour and find it unacceptable that companies are unable to guarantee that their products are not a work of forced labour. In response, some multinationals have denied and even ignored these allegations, yet some others refuse to stop sourcing from their suppliers who use Uighurs for their work.