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With hair extensions you have to look at the fine print. Many times, on the label of the packages you buy online or at the hairdresser, it says "unprocessed virgin Brazilian human hair". It is not from Brazilian women, but from young Chinese from rural villages. The presentation is a commercial trap because of the prejudice in the West that everything that comes from China is of a worse quality. British anthropologist Emma Tarlo explains it very well in her book 'Tangle: The Secret Lives of Hair': "People who work in the industry are aware that Made in China is frowned upon, so they market it in a more glamorous. "
China, like so many other things, is the world's hair factory. A kind of black gold that ends up prolonging the hairstyles of millions of women around the world. In the Asian giant it is estimated that there are about 20,000 hair hunters who are dedicated to touring the villages looking for young people who want to sell hair that has never been dyed, straightened or wavy . Hence the virgin hair. Then it ends up in factories, where raw hair is stored and millions of euros are stacked in pigtails.
It is normally a business regulated and controlled by the authorities. Even dozens of international companies have their hair factories on Chinese soil. But, regarding the moral dilemma, it is essential to discern the type of labor that makes these extensions. It is not the same that they come from a factory where the employees are there voluntarily and receive their wages, that the workforce is forced and comes from internment camps where thousands of Uighur Muslims are held. Or, directly, that the hair itself has been cut from the hair of the women who live in those fields.
Shipping confiscated by the US
The news recently came out that the United States had confiscated a shipment of products made from human hair believed to have been forcibly obtained from internment camps in western China's Xinjiang province. Officials at the Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP) said there were 13 tons of fabrics and other hair products worth an estimated $ 800,000.
"The production of these goods constitutes a very serious violation of human rights and the arrest warrant is intended to send a clear and direct message to all entities seeking to do business with the United States that unlawful and inhumane practices do not they will be tolerated in the United States' supply, "said Brenda Smith, executive assistant commissioner of the CBP trade office.
It is the second time in three months that this agency has issued an arrest warrant for hair shipments from China. The package that arrived this week had been processed by Xinjiang-based Lop County Meixin Hair Product Co Ltd. In this province, the Chinese government has spent years campaigning against the Muslim minority uigu r. Since 2016, authorities have arbitrarily detained thousands of Muslims - more than a million according to reports in various Western media - in so-called "re-education camps." The headquarters of the company that manufactures the extensions is located in an industrial park in the Jotán area, which appears in several international reports for having forced labor from the internment camps.
The first package with Xinjiang extensions that was held this year in the United States had been manufactured by another company called Hetian Haolin Hair Accessories, registered in another industrial park in Lop County, the same place where one of the Uighur camps is located. "The American importers will have to demonstrate that the merchandise was not produced with forced labor if they want to sell it within the country," the Customs note said then.
In December, a local newspaper in Lop published an article in which it was presumed that "graduates of education centers -reeducation camps-" were already working in factories in the area, including the one that processed hair, which was later It was sent to the United States and other countries in Europe, where there are companies that are also clients of the distributors that work with these factories.
Since Beijing they have always argued that the camps are actually "voluntary job training centers," aimed at combating "extremist ideas." The New York Times published a few months ago documents - "leaked by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed the hope that its disclosure would prevent party leaders from escaping the guilt of mass arrests" - on the Surveillance and control of the Uighur population in Xinjiang.
Soon after, a consortium of journalists from various countries confirmed in more detail how these minorities were locked up, indoctrinated and punished. The German network Deutsche Welle (DW) also published that, according to its investigations on the ground, detainees in the camps could even "choose" their crimes . Like the case of a woman who could choose between the crimes of "wearing a hijab, praying or contacting relatives abroad".
In March, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) released a detailed report showing how Beijing's crackdown on Xinjiang's Uighurs went even further: They would have sent thousands of them, some directly from the detention camps, to factories. They supply some of the largest brands in the world. Among them would be Nike, Apple, Huawei or BMW. "They do it under conditions of forced labor," the report said.
This week we have learned thanks to another document revealed by the agency The Associated Press (AP) the forced birth control between Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. What many have dubbed a "demographic genocide." Chinese authorities have reportedly subjected thousands of women to practices such as IUD implantation and forced abortions. Tursunay Ziyawudun, a former inmate of the detention camps, said that while she had been there, the authorities had given her injections until she stopped having her period and they kicked her many times in the belly during interrogations.
The hair business
China's factories - which transform human hair into extensions - can produce a quantity of hair a day that would span five kilometers , 1,825 a year. If we put together what four other factories produce each year, we could weave a particular Silk Road with oriental hair that could unite China with Spain. And if we already add the thousands of kilometers of hair that are collected throughout the Asian giant, we could weave a layer that wraps the planet several times.
Far from the controversy over the extensions that may come from the Xinjiang fields, we are talking about a booming million-dollar industry within the world's largest exporter of human hair . There are even several Spanish distributors who moved to China - complying with all regulations and human rights (according to their statutes) and away from Xinjiang - and established their factories there. These companies usually work with two types of hair: virgin and processed. The first does not have any type of chemical. Processed is hair that discolors and turns platinum blonde.
A few months ago, in a report published in this newspaper, the CEO of one of these companies, Elihú Molina (from the Nair Hair distributor, based in the city of Qingdao, southeast of Beijing), explained why the high demand for Chinese peo: "The Asian woman does not dye. She has jet black hair, natural, and that hair will keep her until old age. She is not like a European woman who is already starting to dye as a teenager. , they spend a lot of time taking care of their hair with natural products. That makes it so good and in demand hair. "
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