a senior volkswagen executive has
defended the company's decision to
continue operating a car plant in
xinjiang a region of china under fierce
scrutiny
due to the treatment of the uyghur
ethnic minority there
the united nations estimates that at
least one million
uyghurs have been detained in a network
of detention camps
and there are widespread allegations of
force sterilization
forced labor and torture occurring in
the province
mounting international concern has led
some multinational companies to
cut ties with the region but volkswagen
has told the bbc that there is
so far no evidence that any of their
employees have been through the camps
as our china correspondent john sudworth
reports
volkswagen makes more than four million
cars a year in china
its many factories here now a vital part
of its global success story
except for one opened seven years ago in
xinjiang
this plant has found itself at the
center of a major controversy
sharing the vast desert landscape with a
network of detention camps that
china has built in recent years
images said to show the mass
incarceration of xinjiang's uyghurs and
other minorities
and their mass transport have helped
make this one of the most
pressing human rights issues of our time
and now vw is having to defend itself
we know about the allegations and it
certainly very much concerns
us and we took this also series to check
whether any of our supply
chains are affected or any of our people
are affected so far we haven't found
evidence
can you be absolutely certain that none
of your employees in that xinjiang plant
has been through a camp i would say no
company could ever make sure we are the
only things that we do we apply
the procedures if you can't be sure i
mean shouldn't you just not be there
i'm i'm not sure i guess we have a
footprint all over the world in
different countries
where situations are now not always to a
situation how we would like to have it
in volkswagen
but xinjiang is not just any other place
and the re-education camps and work
camps however much they're denied by
china
raised tough questions for a company
founded by the nazis
and one which relied heavily on forced
labor
during the war one prominent german
politician
described your company as a company
without a conscience
complicit in upholding a totalitarian
hell in xinjiang
with comments like that isn't it time to
close that plant and leave i would say
leaving a plant is a serious decision
and i guess our history here also in
china has proven that
for the benefit of people and the
society not only for the benefit of
as a company we can mutually develop
and whatever the reputational damage
from keeping the plant
volkswagen knows there'd be a cost to
closing it to
the anger of a government on which it is
now so dependent
john sudworth bbc news beijing