LONDON (Reuters) -A Uyghur rights group’s legal challenge against the British government for failing to investigate the importation of cotton produced in the Chinese region of Xinjiang was dismissed by a London court on Friday.
The World Uyghur Congress (WUC), an international organisation of exiled Uyghur groups, took legal action at London’s High Court against Britain’s Home Office, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and National Crime Agency (NCA).
Judge Ian Dove said in a written ruling that he had dismissed all of the WUC’s grounds of challenge.
But he added: “The outcome of the case does not in any way undermine the striking consensus in the evidence that there are clear and widespread abuses in the cotton industry in the (Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), involving human rights violations and the exploitation of forced labour.”
(Reporting by Sam Tobin, editing by William James)
