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U.S. Representative Donna Shalala voted in favor of H.R. 6270, the Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act, legislation which directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue rules requiring U.S. publicly-traded companies to annually disclose imports of manufactured goods and materials that originate in, or are sourced in part from, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China.
“For years the world has heard reports of horrific, state sanctioned human rights violations perpetrated against the Uyghur people in China,” said Rep. Shalala “This bill sends a strong message that our country will not tolerate these abuses by the Chinese Communist Party. The American people deserve to know if publicly traded companies are helping facilitate forced labor and other violations of human rights in China.
The Chinese government has engaged in a systematic campaign of repression targeting Uyghurs and other Muslim groups in the XUAR. It is estimated that as many as 1.8 million people have been arbitrarily detained and forced into “educational training centers” in the XUAR and subjected to forced labor, torture, political indoctrination, forced renunciations of faith, and other severe human rights abuses.
If signed into law, H.R. 6270 would broaden disclosure requirements, increase oversight, and expand the definition of “forced labor camp,” to include entities involved in the “mutual pairing assistance” program, which subsidizes Chinese manufacturing facilities with cheap Uyghur labor either by establishing factories near internment camps or through mass involuntary transfers of workers from the XUAR to factories across China.
Additionally, the Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act would have the SEC require companies to disclose:
- Whether a good originated in forced labor camps;
- Describe the nature and extent of commercial activity related to the good
- Provide the gross revenue and net profits attributable to the good; and
- Say whether they intend to continue importing from that entity.
