Tomato purees marketed as “Italian” in U.K. supermarkets may be hiding a sinister connection to the forced labor of Uyghurs and other minority groups in China’s Uyghur Region. Despite labels suggesting Mediterranean origins, investigative testing has found that some of these products likely contain tomatoes grown in the Uyghur Region under conditions rife with exploitation.

This troubling revelation, uncovered by the BBC, calls into question the transparency of global supply chains and highlights the U.K.’s failure to safeguard consumers from unwittingly funding forced labor.

Beaten to make quotas

China dominates the global tomato trade, producing a third of the world’s tomatoes. The Uyghur Region is a key hub, exporting tomato paste worldwide. However, the same region has become synonymous with severe human rights abuses, including the detention of over a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in so-called “re-education camps.”

Many detainees are forced to work in agricultural fields, including tomato farms, to meet oppressive quotas.

Mike Rudin and Sarah Buckley report,

The BBC has spoken to 14 people who say they endured or witnessed forced labour in Xinjiang’s tomato fields over the past 16 years. “[The prison authorities] told us the tomatoes would be exported overseas,” Ahmed (not his real name) said, adding that if the workers did not meet the quotas – as much as 650kg a day – they would be shocked with electric prods.

Mamutjan, a Uyghur teacher who was imprisoned in 2015 for an irregularity in his travel documentation, says he was beaten for failing to meet the high tomato quotas expected of him.

“In a dark prison cell, there were chains hanging from the ceiling. They hung me up there and said ‘Why can’t you finish the job?’ They beat my buttocks really hard, hit me in the ribs. I still have marks.”

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