Blood on the Shelves: The Secrets of Xinjiang’s Tomato Industry - BBC World Service Documentaries

Tomatoes made with forced labour in China are likely to be finding their way into supermarkets across Europe, a #BBCEye investigation can reveal.

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A year-long BBC Eye investigation has uncovered that tomato paste produced using forced labour in Xinjiang, western China, is likely being sold in major UK and German supermarkets without the knowledge of customers. This comes three years after supermarkets told the UK Parliament that they had stopped using products from the region.

Forensic testing on tomato puree sold on the shelves of major UK and German retailers indicates they may contain tomatoes produced in China. The investigation found that suppliers in Italy are importing huge quantities of tomato paste from companies that use coercive forced labour in the Xinjiang province of China.

Investigating Xinjiang is notoriously difficult, with journalists often unable to properly report on the situation on the ground. Instead, the BBC Eye team used open-source intelligence techniques including scouring social media, satellite imagery and analysing corporate records and shipping data to understand what is really happening in Xinjiang - and how the tomatoes produced by harsh labour find their way to Europe.

Hearing from over a dozen Uyghurs and Kazakhs now in exile, the team investigates how repeated crackdowns in the region on language, religion, and culture resulted in more than a million people being detained. Witnesses, some of whom have never spoken before, tell the BBC that they were coerced into hard manual labour in the tomato industry, detailing the harsh physical punishments they received for dissent and for failing to meet quotas.

00:00 Introduction
04:15 Mamutjan’s arrest
11:19 Repression
12:50 Forced to work the fields
15:24 Zumrat
16:50 Detention centres
19:48 Mehmet’s story
25:35 The paramilitary tomato company
29:30 Follow the barrels
31:14 Police raids
35:04 Forced labour?
37:12 Millions moved
42:58 Going undercover
49:20 The results are in

🎞️ To watch more investigative journalism from our award-winning BBC Eye team check out this documentary playlist:    • All BBC World Service Documentaries  

🎥 Watch this film in CHINESE here:    • BBC調查：揭開中國新疆番茄產業秘密與「血染貨架」的真相－ BBC News 中文  

🎧 Listen to The Documentary podcast exploring this investigation here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0k7...

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