Interned prisoners in Xinjiang, China are detained with no due process without having ever committed a crime. They are systematically forced to abandon their religion, their culture, and their identity. They are tortured physically and mentally, with beatings, and electric shocks, and waterboarded. They are forcibly sterilized. They are brainwashed as a condition to even be fed, which they are often not. There is forced hard labor, and if they refuse, they are beaten or killed. Many of the workers are children in elementary school. They are medically experimented on. When they die from the torture, or the cold, or starvation, their organs are harvested and sold for profit. Journalism about what goes on in these camps is suppressed, and those who speak out about it are imprisoned. Dissent is illegal and those who do are imprisoned.

Prisoners in Xinjiang are systematically gang raped and sexually tortured, sometimes publicly. If you look in the wikipedia link you will find details on exactly what the sexual torture involves. Unless you have a thick stomach I would not recommend reading it.

This isn't even half of the crimes against humanity in that region. Men, women and children. All of these claims have been corroborated by multiple independent observers. One million people, none of which are convicted of a reasonable crime. Just...let's step back and realize what we're talking about here.

Knowing this, do you believe there is a valid moral equivalence between this and even the most steel-manned, critical interpretation of US-prison-labor? Do you believe that the existence of US prison labor, even with all its (far more nuanced than you may give it credit for) problems precludes or somehow invalidates boycott and criticism of products connected to atrocities in Xinjiang? If so, why?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/06/china-draconi...