Facing abuse, teenage Uyghur girls are forced to work in a Xinjiang (East Turkistan) garment factory

RFA investigation finds secret agreement between factory and local high school to supply workers.

About 90 Uyghur teenage girls are locked up in a Chinese-run garment factory in Xinjiang, where they are forced to toil 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and routinely face verbal and physical abuse, an investigation by Radio Free Asia has found.

The Wanhe Garment Co. Ltd. in Maralbeshi county has a secret agreement with the nearby Yarkant 2nd Vocational High School under which female students aged 16 to 18 are sent to work at the factory against their will, according to four sources, including a village chief and the factory’s security chief, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely.

Local authorities have pressured parents not to object to sending their children to work at the factory, said the village chief, a woman who was responsible for coaxing the parents to let the girls go.

Workers at the plant, which also employs about a dozen women in their 30s and 40s as well as some men, are prevented from leaving. They sleep in dormitories on the factory compound. Most are Uyghurs, but about 15 are Chinese who came from elsewhere to work.

The girls are kept in line by a middle-aged Uyghur woman named Tursungul Memtimin – called “teacher” by the workers – who regularly insults and criticizes them, and sometimes hits them with a bat, said the village official.

“The ‘teacher’ is known to have a very bad temper. She physically assaults the workers using a bat as a means of inflicting harm,” she said.

“The workers live in fear of her, and due to this intimidating environment, no one dares to make an escape,” the official told RFA.

Forced labor in supply chains

The revelation comes amid mounting evidence of Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang and allegations that forced labor is used in the supply chains of major companies.

Inditex, owner of the Zara clothing chain, and Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, as well as carmakers Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have all come under increased scrutiny to ensure that they aren’t using Uyghur forced labor.

In the United States, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, signed into law in December 2021, requires American companies that import goods from Xinjiang to prove that they have not been manufactured with Uyghur forced labor at any stage of production.

Repeated requests by RFA to Wanhe factory officials for an interview have been ignored.