“Rights Group: Lacoste Gloves Made in Chinese Internment Camp”, 3 March 2020

Gloves made in China for the popular French brand Lacoste appear to have been sewn inside a factory where ethnic minorities face forced ideological and behavioral re-education, according to a U.S.-based labor rights group.

Lacoste… says it halted shipments after learning of labor abuse in its supply chain from Washington, D.C.-based labor rights group Worker Rights Consortium. The group alleges that Uigher Muslims and other ethnic minorities are being forced to sew the Lacoste-branded gloves.

A Lacoste spokeswoman told The Associated Press that the Chinese factory had been visited by auditors who interviewed workers and didn’t report any concerns.

“Lacoste prohibits the use of forced, mandatory, or unpaid labor of any type," company spokeswoman Nathalie Beguinot said, adding that 95 pairs of gloves from the factory in question were sold in Europe and that unsold gloves made at the Yili Zhuo Wan Garment Manufacturing Co. are currently warehoused.

Worker Rights Consortium executive director Scott Nova said Lacoste and any other buyers should have known better than to trust auditors who interview workers on site, where they can't speak freely.

“Given the climate of terror the government has created in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, given its intensive efforts to conceal proof of forced labor from foreign eyes, and given the pervasive surveillance apparatus that makes a confidential conversation oxymoronic, no worker is going to tell a factory auditor that her employer and the government are breaking the law by forcing her to work against her will," Nova said.

Officials at Yili Zhuo Wan could not be reached for comment. Last year, media and nonprofit group reports described forced labor and indoctrination of hundreds of people inside the factory…

 “This is basically state-encouraged forced labor and part of a much broader pattern of extremely severe human rights violation," said Amy Lehr, who co-authored a CSIS report that included claims of forced labor in Xinjiang…