Apple Lobbies Congress To Weaken Bill Banning Use Of Chinese Slaves To Make iPhones
One of Leftist Silicon Valley’s favorite sons is positioning itself as being tolerant of Chinese slave labor so it can maximize profits
by FRANK SALVATONovember 22, 2020
Apple, a pioneer in the world of digital censorship and progressive virtue signalling, has dispatched a team of lobbyists to Washington, D.C. to do the unthinkable: lobby for the United States to look the other way while China engages in human slavery to build cheap products for the West.
Lobbyists working for Apple are applying pressure on the elected class in Washington, DC to dilute the effects of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. That proposed legislation would require all US companies to certify that they do not use slavery or forced labor from the Chinese region of Xinjiang, where the ethnic minority Uyghur population are being herded into concentration camps and used as a source of cheap labor.Human rights groups have determined that the Communist Chinese government has ordered as many as 3 million Uyghur people into the newly built concentration camps in Xinjaing.
Apple is heavily dependent on manufacturing in China for many of the parts that make up its line of products, including the iconic iPhone. Human rights organizations have discovered instances where Apple’s supply chain has been serviced by Uyghur forced labor. That evidence suggests those Uyghurs are, essentially, slaves.
Forced labor and slavery, on paper, differ in that international law sees individuals in forced labor being treated as “persons,” where people held in slavery are seen as property. In this case the slave owners would be the Chinese Communist Party and the Communist Chinese government.
In a stunning attempt to disingenuously misinform, China audaciously insists that the identified concentration camps are “vocational training centers” for underprivileged minorities.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) published a study in March identifying 83 companies around the world – including Apple – whose products are manufactured, wholly or in part, in factories using Uyghur slaves. The study also indicated that the use of Uyghur slaves is not limited to the Xinjiang region.
China built the camps in Xinjiang to execute the communist indoctrination of the Uyghur people, who are predominantly, but not all, Muslim. Survivors spoke of not only communist indoctrination – or “re-education – camps, but they also testified to having to endure torture, rape, slavery, and medical studies indicating experiments for live organ harvesting.
Relentless and growing condemnation by human rights groups forced the Communist Chinese government to cease their concentration of Uyghurs in XinJiang. Sadly, all the groups accomplished was the dispersal of these slaves to factories nationwide. The communist Chinese government even offered incentives to companies to hire Uyghur slaves.
Outraged congressional staffers, who failed to execute the courage to stand up and protest against slavery – and who resorted to speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the Apple company was one of many US companies who employed lobbyists to oppose the bill as it is written. They did state for the record that it appeared Apple was trying to water down the bill.
Sickeningly, the loudest voices on the Marxist-Progressive Left and in the Democrat Party have remained silent about the lobbying efforts of these companies, major contributors to their causes and campaigns.
These lobbying efforts expose the raw truth behind why Silicon Valley was so vehemently against President Trump’s re-election. It was all about profits.
At last report there were 3 million Uyghurs detained in Xinjiang and millions more in factories across China.
