Nanchang O-film Tech, whose tech helps power phones, tablets and wearables, is accused by the U.S. Department of Commerce of human rights abuses for helping China’s campaign against Uighurs. The company is listed as a supplier or undefined “partner” with Apple, among others.
Beijing actively promotes the reprehensible practice of forced labor and abusive DNA collection and analysis schemes to repress its citizens. This action will ensure that our goods and technologies are not used in the Chinese Communist Party’s despicable offensive against defenseless Muslim minority populations. – U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, July 20, 2020
The US Department of Commerce added 11 Chinese companies to its list of firms implicated in human rights violations, including China’s reported campaign against Muslim minority groups from an area of the country known as the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. At least one of those companies, Nanchang O-Film Tech, is listed as a supplier or undefined “partner” with nearly two dozen tech and car companies, including Amazon, Apple, Dell, GM and Microsoft.
The Commerce Department said the group of 11 companies that supported “mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, involuntary collection of biometric data and genetic analysis” targeted at Uighurs and other minority groups will face restrictions on US products, including technology.
The government’s move against O-Film, which says it makes cameras, touchscreens and fingerprint sensors, marks an escalation of the Trump administration’s use of tech companies as part of its pressure campaign against the Chinese government… The Commerce Department said that since October 2019, it’s named 48 companies it says are “engaged or enabling” the Chinese government’s repression of Uighurs.
MacDailyNews Note: O-film Tech Company Limited is listed on Apple’s 2019 Supplier Responsibility report’s Supplier List here.