China
The 2021 Global Report on Missing Persons* cited “a massive number of enforced disappearances” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where, it said, “members of the Uyghur minority ethnic group are being forcibly sent to what Chinese authorities call ‘vocational education and training centers’, with no information on their whereabouts and fate given to their families.”
Human Rights Watch reported in April 2021 that as many as one million people had been detained in 300 to 400 facilities.
The Global Report also noted** that ‘Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL)’ under Article 73 of the amended Criminal Procedure Law, and the liuzhi detention system under the 2018 National Supervision Law (NSL) have both been cited as pretexts for enforced and involuntary disappearances.
Numerous cases of forced or involuntary labor have been reported in China, affecting internal trafficking victims and international migrant workers, according to the Global Report. “It has been reported that, in rural areas, women are still being lured by false promises of good jobs and a better future, only to be trapped in forced marriages, with some cases constituting sex trafficking and forced labor.”*** In 2009, China ratified the UN Trafficking in Persons Protocol and set about implementing laws and regulations to prohibit human trafficking.
