Beijing is accused of subjecting the Uyghur Muslim minority to forced labor. This ratification by China was one of the conditions imposed by the European Union to validate an investment agreement.
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China ratified International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions that prohibit forced labor on Wednesday (April 20th). Beijing is accused of using this form of labor in the Xinjiang region, where at least a million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim ethnicities have been incarcerated in camps, according to human rights organizations.
China was so far one of the very few countries that had not ratified these ILO conventions, adopted in 1930 and 1959. The European Union had demanded that China definitively adopt these texts to ratify an agreement of bilateral investment that had been signed at the end of 2020.
In January, the National Assembly had almost unanimously adopted a resolution which described the violence perpetrated by the Chinese regime against the Uyghurs as “crimes against humanity” and of “genocide”. China then denounced “deliberate defamation and stigmatization (…) and brutal interference”.