GENEVA - China has lodged documents with the International Labour Organization (ILO) confirming its ratification of the organisation's conventions on forced labour amidst ongoing concerns over its use in the Xinjiang region's cotton industry.
Martha Newton, the ILO's deputy director-general for policy, said it meant that China was legally-bound to suppress the use of forced or compulsory labour in all its forms, including as a means of racial, social, national or religious discrimination.
More than a million Uyghur Muslims have been incarcerated in Xinjiang where many are allegedly forced to work in the huge cotton industry which supplies more than a fifth of global demand.
