Beijing (AFP)

After H&M, Nike on Thursday became the last foreign ready-to-wear brand to fall victim to China's wrath after their cotton boycotts from Xinjiang, amid allegations of "forced labor" by Uyghurs.

Xinjiang (northwest China) has long been hit by attacks targeting civilians and attributed to separatists or Uyghur Islamists.

Beijing has imposed drastic police surveillance there for several years.

According to studies by American and Australian institutes, at least a million Uyghurs have been interned in "camps" and some subjected to "forced labor", especially in the region's cotton fields.

China considers these reports biased and assures that the "camps" are "vocational training centers" intended to provide employment to the population in order to distance them from extremism.

In 2020, Nike issued a statement in which the company said it was "concerned" by these accusations of "forced labor".

The American sports goods giant then pledged not to buy cotton from Xinjiang.

The region is a large global production area which supplies many textile behemoths.

This Nike press release resurfaced on the Chinese social network Weibo this week after the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada imposed sanctions on China over its treatment of Uyghurs.

In the process, Beijing had denounced "false information" and sanctioned in retaliation for personalities and European organizations, opening the door to other potential responses.

- "I'll throw them away!"

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With the controversy around Nike growing on social networks, a well-known actor and actress in China, Wang Yibo and Tan Songyun, announced Thursday that they were cutting their ties with the brand, of which they were image ambassadors.

"The interests of the country come first. We are strongly opposed to all malicious actions aimed at smearing or spreading rumors about China," said the agency in charge of Ms. Tan's interests.

H&M has been swept away since Wednesday in this media storm because of a press release similar to that of Nike on cotton from Xinjiang.

Sign of a probable intervention of the capacity, it is the Communist Youth League, an organization affiliated with the Communist Party, which had launched hostilities on the Chinese social network Weibo.

"Spreading rumors and boycotting cotton from Xinjiang, while hoping to make money in China? Are you dreaming!", She wrote, publishing the screenshots of the H & M press release, triggering the controversy.

The brand's products have since been withdrawn from major Chinese online shopping sites.

The stores, however, remain open.

"I bought H&M a few days ago," Liu Xiangyu, a Chinese man he met in Beijing in front of a Swedish store, told AFP on Thursday.

“Once I get home, I'll throw them out!” He says.

"If a brand makes inappropriate comments against my country, I will boycott it," says Guo Yi, a young Beijing woman right next to it, even if these patriotic postures, dictated by the social environment, are not always followed up. sustainable.

- Zara too?

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The Aspi institute, mainly funded by Australian authorities but also foreign (especially American), accused H&M in its report of having obtained supplies from structures using Uyghur labor from "re-education camps".

The Uyghurs, Muslims and speaking a Turkic language, represent a little less than half of the 25 million inhabitants of Xinjiang.

On Weibo, other brand names that have taken positions similar to Nike and H&M began to circulate on Thursday: Uniqlo, Zara, Gap or even Adidas, suggesting possible sanctions.

They are the latest in a long list of foreign companies to incur Beijing's wrath for touching on a politically sensitive subject.

Versace, Coach and Givenchy, for example, had to apologize in 2019 for selling T-shirts suggesting that Taiwan and Hong Kong were not part of China.

The previous year, the Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana had sparked a controversy with the publication on Instagram of videos deemed racist.

© 2021 AFP