A claim against the UK government for failing to tackle the import of cotton allegedly produced by forced labour in China’s Xinjiang province reached the High Court this morning. Mr Justice Dove is to rule on whether HM Revenue & Customs, the Home Office and National Crime Agency acted unlawfully by failing to investigate breaches of the Foreign Prison-Made Goods Act 1897 and the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) 2002.

The claim is part of a crowd-funded strategy of international litigation brought by the Global Legal Action Network and World Uyghur Congress. The network said the case ’stands to rewrite the relationship between the UK high street and forced labour goods’.

Campaigners say that the Chinese government’s mass detention of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims is intimately linked with the cotton industry. The US government has already legislated to ban the import goods produced in whole or in part in the Uyghur Region. 

The two-day hearing in London will hear arguments that cotton imported from the region is criminal property because it is obtained as the result of the crimes of forced labour and crimes against humanity. 'Therefore, any UK person who knowingly (or with suspicion) acquires it is committing a money laundering offence,' the network claims.

Its skeleton argument points out that the Foreign Prison-Made Goods Act prohibits the import of goods 'proved to the satisfaction of the commissioners of customs and excise… to have been made or produced wholly or in part in any foreign prison, gaol, house of correction or penitentiary'. 

Dearbhla Minogue, a legal officer with Global Legal Action Network, said: 'These statutes were enacted for a reason. Parliament intended to ensure that no products made in foreign prisons enter these shores, and to ensure that criminal property does not circulate here. The defendants in this case must do more to enforce these rules.'

Lawyers for Home Office, the NCA and HMRC told the court that there has to be a clear link between 'the alleged criminality and its specific product' to investigate whether goods are made in a foreign prison.

James Eadie, for the three defendants, argued in court filings that the World Uyghur Congress has not provided any evidence of identifiable criminal property, but that the NCA 'may commence an investigation' if there is sufficient evidence.

Additional reporting by Sam Tobin, Reuters

 

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