Reuters reports on U.S. Congressional testimony by Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer:
China’s government is forcibly moving young women of the ethnic Uighur minority from their homes in Xinjiang to factories in eastern China, a Uighur activist told the U.S. Congress on Wednesday.
Rebiya Kadeer, jailed for more than five years for championing the rights of the Muslim Uighurs before being sent into exile in the United States in 2005, called for U.S. help in stopping a program she said had already removed more than 240,000 people, mostly women, from Xinjiang.
…The women faced harsh treatment with 12-hour work days and often saw wages withheld for months, Kadeer said, describing the women as “cheap slave labor and potential sex workers.”
Many Uighurs in Xinjiang “see this as one of the most humiliating policies to date” by Chinese authorities, she said. Many suspect that the government policy is to get them to marry majority Han Chinese in China’s cities while resettling Han in traditional Uighur lands, she added. [Full text]
