Human Rights

Since its inception, the communist party of China has attacked human rights in its mission to assert its power. The mass starvations, executions, imprisonments and crushing protesters with tanks may now hopefully be things of the past. However these were the methods used by the communist party which is still in power today.

Tiananmen Square Tank Man photographer Charlie Cole dies - BBC News
The famous ‘Tank Man’ of the 1989 Beijing Protests. Source: Wikipedia

Today human rights in China continue to be disrespected. Journalists, artists, protesters, minorities or anyone the authorities dislike faces imprisonment, exclusion, harassment, and ‘disappearance’. Even Chinese people outside of China who criticize the regime fear being ‘disappeared’. Millions of people now languish inside Chinese ‘re-education’ centers; vast prisons made to brainwash those who may think differently to how the communist party desires.?

Prisoners at a ‘re-education center’. Source: Wikipedia

Not only does the state actively attempt to crush anyone who gets in their way, but the passive conditions of workers in factories throughout the country have been so bad that waves of people killed themselves rather than keep going, with the factories themselves claiming broader social issues in the country are to play.

‘Suicide nets’ at a Foxconn facility, the company known for assembling the iPhone in China. Source: Tes.com

Recent protests in Hong Kong, which China is attempting to wholly absorb, were in part out of fear of being absorbed into the human rights abusing machinery of the Chinese state.

By continuing to buy products made in China, you continue to support the oppression of human rights and liberties which in your own country you may take for granted.?Have a look at some of the products we have found which aren’t made in China.

Sources & Further Reading

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14487328
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract
https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/ne85p7/controversial-chinese-australian-artist-badiucao-fears-disappearing-at-any-moment
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/apr/04/ai-weiwei-missing-chinese-police
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-26856798/china-environmental-protests-video-shows-police-violence
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/world/asia/china-journalists-crackdown.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-51486106
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2020/china-global-threat-to-human-rights
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/dealbook/foxconn-worker-conditions.html
https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/china/report-china/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China#Torture