Effective June 12, 2024, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will apply a rebuttable presumption that goods produced by these entities will be prohibited from entering the United States.
The US department of homeland security (DHS) has added three Chinese firms to the Uygur Forced Labour Prevention Act entity list.
DHS believes footwear firm Dongguan Oasis Shoes ‘cooperated’ with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to “recruit, transfer and receive individuals from persecuted groups, including Uyghurs,” for labour at its factory.
The Forced Labour Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), chaired by DHS, is taking these steps as part of the US commitment to eradicating forced labour, and promoting accountability for the “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other religious and ethnic minority groups” in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
“The FLETF has reasonable cause to believe, based on specific and articulable information, that each of the three entities works with the government of the XUAR to recruit, transport, transfer, harbour or receive forced labour or Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, or members of other persecuted group out of the XUAR,” a DHS release said.
The footwear enterprise included in the list is Dongguan Oasis Shoes Co Ltd, also known as Dongguan Oasis Shoe Industry Co Ltd, Dongguan Luzhou Shoes Co Ltd and Dongguan Lvzhou Shoes Co Ltd.
The enterprise headquartered in the Guangdong province manufactures shoes and shoe material products and “cooperated with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) to recruit, transfer and receive individuals from persecuted groups, including Uyghurs, out of the XUAR for labour at its factory in Guangdong,” the release said.
The task force has till now added 68 entities—including the three identified in this announcement—to the entity list since the UFLPA was signed into law in December 2021.
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)