UN investigators: Contemporary slavery spreads across the globe

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Contemporary forms of slavery are prevalent around the world, including forced labor by China’s Uighur minority, bonded labor among the lowest-caste Dalits in South Asia, and in the Gulf states, a U.N. investigator said. , domestic servitude in Brazil and Colombia.

The Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council also added that traditional slavery, especially the slavery of ethnic minorities, exists in Mauritania, Mali and Niger in the African Sahel region.

Child labor – another contemporary form of slavery – exists in all regions of the world, including the worst forms, he said in a report distributed to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.

“In Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East, the Americas and Europe, 4 to 6 percent of children are said to be involved in child labor, with much higher rates in Africa (21.6 percent) and sub-Saharan Africa (23.9 percent),” he said .

His conclusion about Uighurs in northwest China’s Xinjiang region came in December when the United States banned imports from the region unless companies could prove the items were produced without forced labor. There are many claims that China has systematically and extensively abused ethnic and religious minorities in its western regions.

China’s foreign ministry has sharply criticized the discovery by Japanese scholar and professor of international law and human rights at Keele University in the United Kingdom, Obokata.

In his report, Obokata said that, based on an independent assessment of available information from many sources, including victims and government accounts, he “thinks it is reasonable to conclude that Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities are involved in agriculture and manufacturing. It has been going on in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”

He cited two systems used in China — vocational education and training for ethnic minorities followed by job placement, and labor poverty alleviation programs that transfer surplus rural labor to other jobs. There is also labor transfer in Tibet, where farmers, herdsmen and other rural workers are moved to low-skilled, low-income jobs, he said.

While the programs may create jobs and income as the government claims, Obokata said that in many cases the work was involuntary, with workers subjected to excessive surveillance, abusive living and working conditions, restrictions on movement, threats, physical or Sexual violence and other inhuman or degrading treatment.

“There are circumstances that may constitute enslavement for crimes against humanity and warrant further independent analysis,” he said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused Obokata of choosing to “believe the lies and false information about Xinjiang spread by Western countries such as the United States and anti-China forces.”

He also accused Obokata of abusing his authority as a special investigator to “smear China and become a political tool for anti-China forces.” He accused unnamed “forces” of fabricating false information about forced labor and “undermining the prosperity and stability of Xinjiang and curbing China’s development and revitalization.”

“China strongly condemns this,” Wang said. “There has never been ‘forced labor’ in Xinjiang.”

He said that China guarantees the rights and interests of workers of all ethnic groups to obtain employment, participate in economic and social life, and “share the dividends of economic and social progress.”

Minorities in Latin America also suffer from forced labor, Obokata said, noting that in rural Brazil, including the Amazon, “slavery is intricately linked to environmentally damaging economic activities, including illegal logging and mining.” Most victims He said they were people of African descent with low levels of education.

The report also cited two other contemporary forms of slavery – child or forced marriage and sexual slavery.

In marginalized communities such as the Roma minority in southeastern Europe, child marriage rates have soared, he said. In parts of the Balkans, half of Roma women aged 20 to 24 were married before the age of 18, compared with about 10 percent nationally, he said.

He said official UK figures showed the vast majority of forced marriage cases were linked to Pakistan and to a lesser extent Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India and Somalia.

Elsewhere, Boko Haram forces Christian women and girls to convert to Islam and marry, and Obokata said some minorities in Nigeria practice forced or child marriages at high rates — 74.9 percent in Kambaris and 74.9 percent in Fulford. 73.8 percent, he said.

Forced marriages are also a problem in the African countries of Congo, Cambodia, India, Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka and Vietnam in Asia, and Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras and Panama in Latin America, he said.

As for sexual slavery, which has been particularly high profile during conflict and humanitarian crises, Obokata noted that in 2014 more than 6,500 women from the Yazidi minority in Iraq were reported to have been captured by ISIS fighters who used rape against them weapons of war. He said nearly 2,800 Yazidi women and children were still missing or imprisoned today.

In Ethiopia, minority women in northern Tigray, Amhara and Afar regions have been subjected to rape, sexual mutilation and other forms of sexual violence by all parties to the conflict, Obokata said.

In northern Nigeria, Boko Haram mainly targets Christians and moderate Muslims for slavery, including sexual slavery, he said.

In Myanmar, women from the Rohingya Muslim minority “have been subjected to systematic violence by the country’s security forces, which may be considered a war crime or a crime against humanity,” he said.

While contemporary forms of slavery persist among minorities, Obokata said the government, national human rights institutions, civil society organizations, and regional and other groups “play an important role in preventing the exploitation of minorities.”