Australia is allowing thousands of imports from Chinese companies blacklisted by the US over alleged links to forced Uyghur labour, including a supplier of parts to Sydney Metro vehicles, government documents have revealed.
In 2021 the Biden administration passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and from the following year began outlawing imports from dozens of companies, seizing shipments at the border and releasing a public blacklist of the companies, mostly operating in Xinjiang.
But far from following its ally’s lead, the Australian government has continued to wave through thousands of imports from US-blacklisted companies.
Using freedom of information laws, the Guardian obtained details of 3,347 import declarations that name eight US-blacklisted companies as suppliers of materials to Australian importers since 2020. The companies ship a range of products, including parts for car batteries and trains used by state governments; safety gear for tradespeople; spices and food additives; and laser printers.
The documents show Australia’s imports from the eight companies actually increased after the US introduced its ban, peaking in 2023.
Separate records obtained from the fisheries department show Australian seafood importers are receiving hundreds of shipments from Chinese-based processors publicly linked to the use of Uyghur labour during an exhaustive investigation by the Outlaw Ocean Project, a not-for-profit investigative reporting group based in Washington DC.
It is the first time the scale of Australia’s imports from companies accused of association with Uyghur forced labour has been documented.
Relatives of those detained as part of the Chinese government’s crackdown on the Uyghur Muslim minority and other ethnic groups in China’s far west have accused Australia of complicity in the use of forced Uyghur labour and demanded the foreign minister, Penny Wong, intervene.
The president of the Australian Uyghur Tangritagh Women’s Association, Ramila Chanisheff, described the scale of imports as “astounding”.
“It is frustrating,” she said. “I haven’t heard those numbers before … it is something we have been lobbying on quite a bit, so we’d hoped there’d been some improvement.
“Why are we falling behind, why are we not divesting from these companies to ensure we are not complicit? It is in the hands of our government and the industries to ensure that these goods do not come in.”
Wong’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
The FoI documents reveal that two companies – Camel Group Battery Trading Co and KTK Group – were the most common suppliers, named on 2,869 of the 3,347 import declarations.
KTK Group produces parts for trains, supplying them for projects in New South Wales, Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland.
Its Australian entity, KTK Australia, boasted on social media in 2019 of providing “roof and handrails” for the interiors of Sydney Metro vehicles.
KTK Australia was not engaged directly by the state government but as a subcontractor, and was supplying parts until mid-2022, the Guardian understands.
In mid-2020, KTK Group was added by the US commerce department to a previous economic blacklist for alleged use of Uyghur labour.
At the time KTK Group stridently denied the allegations, saying it was added to the blacklist in the absence of any proof and had never employed Uyghurs in any part of its supply chain.
Two years later, it was added to the list of entities blacklisted under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
That listing alleged KTK Group and other entities were “working with the government of Xinjiang to recruit, transport, transfer, harbor or receive forced labor of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, or members of other persecuted groups out of Xinjiang”.
The number of Australian import declarations naming KTK Group as a supplier increased to record levels in 2022, after the US commerce department action, the FoI documents show.
KTK Group did not respond to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Sydney Metro said its contracts included a “number of checks and balances that ensure contractors abide by all applicable laws”.
“Contracting partners are also responsible for ensuring compliance with applicable laws by any sub-contractors or consultants that they engage,” the spokesperson said.
“If one of our contractors were found to be using products sourced from a sub-contractor engaging in forced labour, it would be a breach of their contract.”
The primary Sydney Metro contractor, which engaged KTK, said it took “every possible measure to ensure suppliers comply with all laws, including laws in relation to labour” and launched a specific review of working conditions at KTK factory sites when allegations of alleged Uyghur labour first emerged.
Camel Group Co Ltd is one of the largest battery manufacturers in the world.
It was added to the US blacklist in 2023.
The US blacklisting accuses Camel Group of “working with the government of Xinjiang to recruit, transport, transfer, harbor or receive forced labor or Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, or members of other persecuted groups out of Xinjiang”.
Its subsidiary Camel Group Battery Trading Co Ltd made record exports to Australia in the same year, according to the FoI documents. Exports from Camel Group Battery Trading Co continued at signifiant levels in 2024, the documents show.
Chenguang Biotech Group, which manufactures food additives and spices, was blacklisted in 2023 but continues to export to Australia. Chenguang was accused of sourcing material “from Xinjiang or from persons working with the government of Xinjiang or the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps for purposes of the ‘‘poverty alleviation’ program or the ‘pairing-assistance’ program or any other government-labor scheme that uses forced labor”.
Hoshine Silicon Industry (Shanshan) Co Ltd, the world’s largest metallurgical-grade silicon producer and a major supplier to the solar industry, was added to the blacklist in 2022. It was added to a list of entities in “Xinjiang that mine, produce, or manufacture wholly or in part any goods, wares, articles and merchandise with forced labor”.
Its exports to Australia have continued since the blacklisting. Hoshine has production bases in Xinjiang and has participated in labour transfer programs, according to western researchers, citing company reports, state media and propaganda. Its website lauds its “generous working and living conditions for more than 10,000 local minority employees”.
The Guardian contacted all eight companies for comment. Only Geehy Semiconductor Company Limited, which was blacklisted in 2023 as a subsidiary of Ninestar, responded.
The company was added to the blacklist for allegedly “working with the government of Xinjiang to recruit, transport, transfer, harbor or receive forced labor or Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, or members of other persecuted groups out of Xinjiang”.
The company said in a statement the listing was “baseless and arbitrary” and it had filed a lawsuit with the court of international trade, as well as formally petitioning the US Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force to remove it from the list.
“We strongly condemn and oppose any and all forms of forced labor,” the statement said.
“We would like to restate that Ninestar not only does not use any forced labor in our practice, but also has always upheld the principles of fairness and impartiality in our recruitment.”
‘Very little to no action’ from Australia
Mamutjan Abdurehim, an Adelaide-based Uyghur man, said his wife, Muherrem Ablet, was detained almost eight years ago, first in an internment camp and later in prison.
The couple were living with their daughter, Muhlise, and son, Hikmet, in Malaysia in December 2015, when Ablet lost her passport. She was forced to return to Xinjiang to replace it, using a one-off travel document and taking her children with her.
In April 2017 she was detained in an internment camp for reasons that remain unclear. She was released for a brief period but then arrested and convicted of inciting ethnic hatred. Officials told the children not to communicate with Abdurehim.
He has been cut off from his family ever since, glimpsing his daughter only on a CNN broadcast after reporters tracked her down at her grandmother’s home in 2021.
His wife has disappeared. Abdurehim has no idea where she is being held or when she will be released.
“You can try and imagine my life here now,” Abdurehim said. “It’s just the dead person walking around, like trying to survive, trying to stay sane, trying to prevent my mental health from deteriorating even worse, even more.
“I’m trying my everything to do these things, to be reunited with them one day.”
Abdurehim and other Uyghur community activists have urged the federal government to sanction China for its treatment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities.
He said he had met Wong twice and asked her to do more to crack down on companies accused of having links to forced labour in Xinjiang.
“I always imagine my wife working for some kind of apparel company,” he said. “Because many women just get taught sewing … during the internment as a sort of work placement and then just use these skills to use their labor for state profit.”
The Australian Uyghur activist Nurgul Sawut has been campaigning for the federal government to ban imports from companies with alleged links to Uyghur forced labour.
“Australia, if we look at it from international perspective, there’s very little to no action whatsoever, trying to ban or even paying attention to any products … [that are] actually produced by forced labor,” she said.
She said the Uyghur community found it hard to fathom that Australians could be buying and using products made in a forced labour program targeting their relatives and friends.
“It makes us even sadder … it’s the next level of grieving,” she said. “It’s almost like we live in the same society, yet … with the people’s lives, it doesn’t really matter.
“It’s something disposable.”
‘Lies, disinformation’ and denials
UN experts and rights groups say there are two distinct avenues for forced labour in Xinjiang, first through the use of labour at so-called re-education and training camps, in which an estimated one million people, mostly Uyghurs and other minorities, have been held in recent years.
The second is a “poverty alleviation through labour transfer” system involving the movement of rural workers to factories across China, which predates the “strike hard” campaign that introduced the camps. About 2.6 million people have been employed through the transfer programs, according to Xinjiang authorities, but observers have deep concerns over the extent to which they are voluntary, often separating people from families. Government documents from 2017 revealed that refusing such government assistance was seen as a red flag for religious extremism, and grounds for being sent to an internment camp.
In 2023, a UN committee described the forced labour programs as measures of coercion against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, and called on China to dismantle them and release participants. In August 2023, the United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, Tomoya Obokata, said it was “reasonable to conclude” that forced labour of members of minority groups had taken place in Xinjiang.
In 2020 the Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimated more than 80,000 Ugyhurs had been moved out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019.
Dr Michael Clarke, an expert on Xinjiang at Deakin University, has described China’s treatment of the Uyghurs as the “largest mass repression of a single ethnic group on the planet”.
Clarke said the Chinese Communist party justified the use of forced or coerced labour as a means of both “assimilating” Uyghurs and generating economic development to break down “differences between ethnic groups and nationalities to achieve much greater unity”.
Anecdotal evidence suggested Uyghurs subjected to forced labour experienced significant and lasting trauma, he said.
“They get funnelled into these sort of environments where they’re still in Xinjiang, but they’re being moved away directly from their own communities,” he said. “They live in dormitory-type situations, either within the industrial park or very close by – it’s about removing those individuals from their communities, family connections, friendship circles, all those kind of things.”
Adrian Zenz, a German academic who is one of the foremost experts on forced labour in Xinjiang, believes such practices are increasing, driven by record numbers of coercive labor transfers.
“I’m assessing that up to 2.5 million ethnic minorities in Xinjiang are at risk of forced labour from the two forced labour systems – the one tied to the camps and the one tied to coercive poverty alleviation programs,” he said.
Zenz said the US laws introduced in 2021 had been effective. Company reports show targeted entities recording decreased exports due to geopolitical reasons. The laws had also helped trigger foreign divestment from the region, he said.
“So it does have an impact, but it’s only the US doing it at the moment,” he said. “The Europeans have ratified a forced labour regulation, which however will not come into effect for three years.
Australia relies on its Modern Slavery Act to compel some large businesses to report annually on how they are dealing with forced labour in their supply chains and operations.
In December, Labor pledged to strengthen those laws, including by providing better guidance and support for businesses, and consulting on a model to make written declarations that particular regions, industries, products or suppliers are regarded as high-risk for modern slavery.
The government appointed Chris Evans, a former Labor minister, as Australia’s first anti-slavery commissioner in November.
Zenz described the efforts of the UK, Canada and Australia – which all rely on reporting requirements through modern slavery laws – as “completely inadequate”. He said forced labour driven by state policy must be treated entirely differently to forced labour practices in the private sector.
“Countries like Australia absolutely must enact effective policies in order to avoid complicity with this atrocity, helping to basically finance Xinjiang’s police state by allowing the state and its state-owned enterprises or private enterprises to make money off the back of Uyghur workers,” he said.
China has consistently denied that any forced labour exists in Xinjiang and describes the allegations as the product of “lies and disinformation” by the US and other western governments.
On Wednesday, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Guo Jiakun, told a regular press briefing that the “so-called forced labour accusation is completely unfounded”.
Speaking in response to recent additions to the blacklist, Guo accused the US of enacting the “malicious legislation… on the basis of false narratives”.
“The move is designed to interfere in China’s internal affairs, harm China’s interests and hold back China’s development.”
Article by:Source – Christopher Knaus and Helen Davidson
