Canada is looking into claims that Nike and Dynasty Gold used forced labour from Uyghurs.

Investigations have been opened by Canada’s ethics watchdog into claims that Nike Canada and a gold mining business benefited from using Uyghur slave labour in their operations in China.

A coalition of human rights organisations’ complaints are the basis for the watchdog’s investigations.

According to Nike, there are no longer any connections between them and the alleged employers of Uyghur forced labour.

According to Dynasty Gold, these accusations surfaced after they departed the area.

According to a 2022 United Nations study, China had violated “serious human rights” against the Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority group who reside in the Xinjiang area, and these breaches “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.” The charges were rejected by Beijing.

Since the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (Core) began accepting complaints in 2021, this is the organisation’s first probe of this kind to be publicly disclosed.

According to the agency, Nike Canada Corp. has business ties to a number of Chinese firms that an Australian research group has recognised as employing or profiting from Uyghur forced labour.

According to research issued in 2020 by the think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), over 80,000 Uyghurs had been sent to work in factories around China.

The corporation has not taken “any concrete steps to ensure without reasonable uncertainty that forced labour isn’t involved in their supply chain,” according to the study.

Nike has stated that it is no longer associated with these businesses and has shared information about their due diligence procedures.

Nike reportedly declined talks with the Ombudsman but instead wrote a letter expressing worry over accusations of forced labour in and related to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

We have verified with our contract suppliers that they do not use textiles or spun yarn from the XUAR, and Nike fails to source goods from the area.

According to the research on Dynasty Gold, the gold mining corporation benefited from the employment of Uyghur forced labour at a mine in China where it had a controlling stake. The mining business asserts that it does not oversee the mine’s operations and that these accusations surfaced after it left the area.