2023-05-19 18:37:12
The fight goes on. After the failure of a first complaint, closed without follow-up last April, the NGOs Sherpa, Ethics on the label and the Institute of Uyghurs of Europe, on Tuesday May 16, filed a new request for the opening of judicial investigation by the national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office in Paris (Pnat) against four multinationals in the textile sector.
The associations accuse them of profiting from the forced labor of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority present in the Xinjiang region of China, where 25% of the world’s cotton is produced. They lodge a complaint for offenses of concealment of crimes against humanity, genocide, reduction in aggravated servitude and trafficking in human beings in an organized gang.
Second attempt to “condemn impunity”
Opened in June 2021, the first investigation had resulted in a classification without follow-up on the part of the Pnat, which then considered itself “ incompetent to prosecute these four fashion giants, Uniqlo, Inditex (Zara), SMCP (Sandro, Maje, etc.) and the shoemaker Skechers, for concealment of violations.
Uighurs: what risk do the textile giants prosecuted by French justice risk?
“We have shown our incomprehension in the face of a fairly restrictive justice », regrets Nayla Ajaltouni, from the Ethics on the Label collective. Unlike the first request to open an investigation, the NGOs are now taking civil action and hope to obtain the appointment of an investigating judge.
The first, like the associations’ second complaint, is based in particular on a report published in March 2020 by the Australian NGO Aspi (Australian Strategic Policy Institute). This report presented evidence of the movement of at least 80,000 Uyghur prisoners to factories producing for export from detention camps. Eighty-three companies are singled out in this document and have taken advantage of this workforce via their subcontractors, many of them in the textile sector.
The three French associations are currently focusing on four major groups, on which they have been able to gather «a sufficient number of documents, open sources that lead to believe that these groups continue to profit from this forced laborassistant Nayla Ajaltouni. In view of this evidence, we are convinced that we should not give up. The subject is too serious, and the time has come to condemn this impunity. » The four multinationals have all contested the charges against them.
European legislative projects in the pipeline
Furthermore, NGOs are also counting on potential legislative progress at European Union level to better control the activities of multinationals. By the end of May, the European Parliament will examine a draft directive on a European duty of care.
Added to this is the examination of the regulation proposed by the European Commission to prohibit the sale of products resulting from forced labor on European soil, in September 2022. “But everything remains to be doneconcludes Nayla Ajaltouni. It remains to ensure that these texts are ambitious enough. »
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