Six Rohingya who returned from Bangladesh were arrested in Buthidaung

Seeing the six Rohingya returning from the refugee camp in Bangladesh.

Rakhine State On November 3, six Rohingya who returned from a refugee camp in Bangladesh were arrested in Surina village of Buthidaung Township and are being prosecuted under the immigration law, the Rakhine State Military Council's Rakhine Daily News reported.

37-year-old Amin Ali and his six family members, who lived in the Kutu Palaung refugee camp, were arrested when they were returning to the village of Suri Na, where they previously lived due to the difficulty of living there.

Currently, their family is detained at Buthidaung area police station.

An unnamed Rohingya living in Sittwe Township told RFA that they should not try to arrest and imprison those who returned to their original places because of the inconvenience in the refugee camp.

"They sneaked in and made headlines. This is not true. They were born in this Rakhine region and grew up in the Rakhine region. In 2017, they ran away because they couldn't live anymore. Now that the region is stable, they will return to their place. I think it should not be possible to be arrested and charged with this."

Last October 30, 21 Rohingya who entered Rakhine state from refugee camps in Bangladesh to go to Malaysia were arrested in the sea near Dompey village in Rati Taung Township.

RFA contacted the military council's spokesman for Rakhine state about the arrest of Rohingyas by phone, but he did not receive a response.

According to the list compiled by RFA, in 2023, In the news week from October 27 to November 2, 226 Rohingya were arrested in Rakhine State and Myanmar as they tried to go to Malaysia.

"Xinjiang Cotton" is the heaviest link in the chain of slavery placed on Uighurs

China has formally ratified two key international labor conventions as it tightens its grip on Uyghur immigrants

In recent years, the issue of Uyghur forced labor has become one of the most important issues in the international community. Because China's monopoly of the global production sector has caused Chinese products to cover the entire world. As a result, the developed Western world, with its highest level of consumption, naturally became the strongest consumer market for Chinese products.

But the cheap labor, slave labor, and human rights abuses behind China's production and capture of international markets have begun to alarm the international community. In particular, with the issue of the Uyghur Genocide being on the agenda in the Western world, the facts that Uighurs are being used as slave laborers in China's production chain have also become public. But China, as always, denied the evidence that Uyghurs were being forced into labor and did not stop making eye contact. On October 28, the Chinese-run "Xinjiang Newspaper" published an article entitled " The roar of the cotton machine is the loudest. " The article also denied that Uighurs were being slave labor in the Xinjiang cotton industry. That is, in the review, "Although the cotton growing areas in the southern and northern parts of Xinjiang have fully automated all the processes from planting, harvesting and processing, the anti-Chinese Western powers led by the United States are trying to capture Xinjiang and punish China with the evil intention of disrupting China by capturing Xinjiang. It is stated that it is being investigated, especially that Xinjiang is being used for cotton.

So, is "Xinjiang Cotton" making Uyghurs into slave labor really "slander" as stated in the above review?

To answer this question, let us first look at the size of cotton cultivation in Uyghur and its position in China. " Xinhua News Agency " announced in April this year that the cotton production area in the Uyghur area accounts for 90.2 percent of the total cotton production in China, and the cultivated area of ​​cotton is 37.454 million hectares, accounting for 83.2 percent of the total cotton cultivation area in China. This means that Uyghur is China's largest base for cotton planting and production. In that case, is there a difference in cotton planting and production in Northern Uyghur, where the Chinese population is the largest, and Southern Uyghur, where the Uyghur population is the absolute majority? A research report on the cotton cultivation of Uyghur Eli published by China's "Chi He Intelligence Service Platform" (七禾结果智库服务服务)  states that the cotton production scale of Southern Uyghur Eli accounts for more than 50 percent of the entire Uyghur Eli. This means that the largest cotton production base in the Uyghur region is not the Northern Uyghur region based on the Bingtuan population, but the Southern Uyghur region based on the Uyghur population. More surprisingly, in a 2019 survey report published by the Nanhua Futures Research Center, which is China 's leading research center in the futures industry, on the cotton cultivation and procurement scale of Southern Uyghur Province, it is mentioned that Southern Uyghur Province is the central area for the production of hand-picked cotton. The report also stated that there is a difference in quality and price between hand-picked cotton and machine-picked cotton, and that hand-picked cotton is higher in quality and price.

From the above data, it can be clearly seen that Uyghur is not only the largest cotton production base in China, but the Southern Uyghur region, where the Uyghur population is densely populated, is the largest cotton producing area. Not only that, the cotton in South Uyghur is cultivated not by machines, but by human power, i.e. by hand. In that case, is it natural for China not to use the so-called "Namarat Uygurs" or the so-called "rural surplus labor force" in Southern Uyghur to plant cotton?

Adrian Zenz, a senior researcher at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation , published an important report in May of this year that proved that "Xinjiang Cotton" was related to Uyghur forced labor . The report revealed that although China is promoting the mechanization of its cotton production sector, it is forcing Uyghurs to plant cotton in 2021 and 2022 through the forced transfer of labor force. Even this kind of transfer of employment has become part of China's so-called "five-year plan" from 2021 to 2025. The report also stated that it is not possible to harvest the long-fiber cotton grown in South Uyghur by machines, and after 2019, it has become a strong force to move South Uyghur to cotton cultivation in the name of employment. This situation has reached the point where even people over 60 years of age are being sent to the cotton fields. In addition, the report also said that local government authorities have compiled a list of "lazy people" who can't afford to go out and work, and there are even 77-year-olds on the list.

In fact, cotton planting is not an unfamiliar "labor" to the Uyghurs. Many young people in South Uyghur have experienced cotton planting during their school life. Not only that, but such cotton-planting work was generally started under the guise of "volunteers" and completed with "experiential learning." This kind of volunteerism Although China has announced that it has abolished the forced labor system in rural areas since 2017, the Uyghurs in Southern Uyghur have not been freed from this kind of forced labor.

It is clear that in Uyghur, which has become China's largest cotton production base, whether it is Uyghur farmers under the "Namratlik" cap or Uyghur imprisoned in the camps under the "Three Powers" cap, China's slavery chains are firmly tied around their necks. Not using the power of the Uyghurs condemned to slavery is certainly not in China's nature. Specifically, "Xinjiang Cotton" is not only the largest group of industries related to Uyghur forced labor in China, but also the heaviest part of the chain of slavery placed on Uyghur.