Japanese clothing brands Muji and Uniqlo have raised eyebrows for spruiking "Xinjiang Cotton" products, while brands in Australia are distancing themselves from the region that has become synonymous with China's mass internment of Uyghur Muslims.

Key points: Cult 'no logo' brand Muji continues to advertise 'Xinjiang cotton' clothing

Cult 'no logo' brand Muji continues to advertise 'Xinjiang cotton' clothing Australian companies are pulling out of the region due to forced labour concerns

Australian companies are pulling out of the region due to forced labour concerns Uyghur Muslims have been rounded up and detained en masse in Xinjiang

"Made of organic cotton delicately and wholly handpicked in Xinjiang, the men's Oxford Shirts of MUJI are soft and breathable with a clean design," Muji says on its website.

Uniqlo, meanwhile, advertises a men's button-down shirt on its website with the selling point:

"Made from Xinjiang Cotton, famous for its superb quality".

More than a million Uyghurs — a Turkic-speaking Islamic minority in the north-west of China — have been rounded up and placed in what rights groups have called re-education internment camps that Beijing maintains are "vocational training centres" and "boarding schools" designed to prevent extremism.

Concerns are rife that products sourced from Xinjiang are tied to the forced labour of Uyghurs — and Muji says it has launched a review in response to inquiries by the ABC.

Muji has garnered something of a cult following for its "no-logo" brand, its environmental ethos and its minimalist aesthetic.

According to its website, they launched the "Xinjiang Cotton Collection" on May 17 this year — a day after the Wall Street Journal published an explosive article alleging international clothing brands were working with Xinjiang-based factories suspected of using involuntary labour.

Human Rights Watch's Sophie Richardson told the ABC when most people saw the word "Xinjiang", they thought of the "mass arbitrary detention of a million Turkic Muslims" and "religious repression", not the quality of cotton or their fashion choices.

"What?! They're actually using that as a slogan?!" she said.

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"Have they somehow missed two straight years of news about gross human rights violations in Xinjiang?

"The idea that a company would use that as a selling point for a product, especially at a moment when there are growing and legitimate concerns about forced labour in that region — I'm trying to come up with the right word here — is pretty mind-boggling."

Muji and Uniqlo are far from alone in sourcing cotton from the region — the Australian branches of Target, Cotton On, H&M, Jeanswest, Ikea and Dangerfield were revealed to have purchased cotton from Xinjiang — but most don't advertise "Xinjiang Cotton" as a selling point.

In mid-October, Cotton On and Target Australia stopped sourcing cotton from Xinjiang due to concerns about mass human-rights abuses, after a Four Corners investigation revealed Uyghur Muslims were forced to work in garment factories in the region.

In a statement, Ikea said it was "monitoring the situation very closely", adding that it had audited its one yarn sub-supplier in Xinjiang in July this year and "confirmed that there is no forced or bonded labour taking place".

The ABC has not linked specific factories suspected to be complicit in forced labour of Uyghur Muslims to Uniqlo or Muji's brand, and Muji rejected a request to provide a list of its suppliers in Xinjiang.

'Xinjiang Cotton' just like 'Australian Down' and 'French Linen'

Muji advertises that its shirts are "made of organic cotton delicately and wholly handpicked in Xinjiang". ( Muji )

Ryohin Keikaku, Muji's parent company, told the ABC that some of its products used "yarn spun from cotton cultivated in Xinjiang, one of the world's finest cotton-producing areas".

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"We do not disclose any names of suppliers," spokesperson Aya Nishimura said.

"However, in response to the recent inquiries, we have started conducting a review of the situation in the Xinjiang area for farms that cultivate cotton as well as spinning factories that produce yarn — the products of which are applied in our cotton products.

"We will announce the results of the review when necessary."

She said indicating the place of production was similar to labelling items like "Australian Down" and "French Linen".

"The product name 'Xinjiang Cotton' is also one of the examples," she said.

A cached version of Muji Australia's Facebook page from September showed the brand promoting "Xinjiang Cotton", but the word "Xinjiang" was deleted the next day.

Ms Nishimura added the company's manufacturers must abide by its code of conduct — which includes the prohibition of forced labour — and that "performance is confirmed by a third-party organisation".

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"If any non-compliance is found at the factories of the manufacturing contractor, it must immediately be pointed out and corrected.

"Ryohin Keikaku Group will continue providing customers with products that are of better quality and value, while improving the efficiency of approach in terms of the prevention of human rights violations and modern slavery throughout all its business areas including the value chain."

Ms Richardson said the onus was on companies to demonstrate that they were not complicit in human rights violations.

"They should be making their due diligence strategy and findings public," she said.

In August, Muji also released a document about preventing forced labour, saying it was "aware that the risk of modern slavery and human trafficking exists within our own operations and in the supply chain".

"We are committed to eliminating and preventing such risk as much as possible," it read.

Uniqlo advertises a shirt "made from Xinjiang cotton, famous for its superb quality". ( Uniqlo )

"The Group applies zero tolerance to any kind of human rights abuses including harassment and discrimination."

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Meanwhile, in a statement to the ABC, Uniqlo said that it "sources cotton from a number of locations around the world, including Australia, the US and China".

"Uniqlo does not have any production partners located in the Xinjiang area," the statement read.

"Our China-based manufacturing partners source cotton from multiple cotton-producing areas around the country."

Pervasiveness of forced labour a 'business of oppression'

A photo posted to Xinjiang Judicial Administration's WeChat account in 2017 shows Uyghur detainees listening to a "de-radicalisation" speech. ( Supplied: RFA )

Last year, China produced almost a quarter of the world's cotton — of that, 84 per cent came from Xinjiang.

Experts maintain that the issue is so pervasive in Xinjiang that it is nearly impossible to disentangle untainted sources from supply chains.

"It's increasingly difficult to separate coercive labour practices in Xinjiang from legitimate sources," Nathan Ruser from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute told the ABC.

"Basically you have a business environment where over 1 million potential employees will be coerced into labour, and a government and business environment that actively encourages firms receiving these workers.

"There is also a lack of any legitimate access to the region — with the coercive social controls in the region it is impossible to have a frank conversation with factory managers or even employees.

"There can be no way anymore to certify that the products you receive from your subcontractors is legitimate."

Last month the United States blacklisted 28 Chinese organisations over human rights abuses against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

Chinese group Liutan and Hong Kong-based Esquel Group both listed Muji as a brand they supply, which Muji later confirmed.

In a September 2016 article on its official WeChat account, Liutan said it had been making clothes for Muji with cotton sourced from Xinjiang since 2002 — it also posted articles about "studying Xi Jinping thought" in Communist Party workshops held by the company.

Liutan's business manager Xiaoqing Xu told the ABC that the company's subcontractors were audited by a third party.

"We don't know about it. That's impossible that we can be linked to this [forced Uyghur labour]," she said.

Esquel spokesperson Wesley Choi told the ABC the company did not have any business relationship with the 28 blacklisted companies and had been sourcing and spinning cotton from Xinjiang since 1995. It has three spinning mills in Xinjiang with a workforce of 1,300. Of those, 386 are Uyghurs.

"Since 2017, as a way to create employment for Uyghur minorities from southern Xinjiang, the government … has provided Uyghur candidates to find work in [Xinjiang capital] Urumqi," Mr Choi said.

"We were in no way forced to employ anyone; we went through our company's own selection process to determine if the candidates were suitable for meeting the job requirements and made hiring decisions accordingly.

Mr Choi said Esquel hired 34 such candidates in Urumqi, Xinjiang's capital, adding: "Any training we provide for our employees are in keeping with standard training applied in all Esquel factories and have no relationship with any government-run or instigated program."

Muji also clarified its links to Huafu Fashion Company.

Huafu has come under scrutiny after Target Australia stopped orders from its Xinjiang mill, while H&M said its yarn sourced through Huafu came from outside Xinjiang and that its internal investigations "showed no evidence of forced labour".

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 48 seconds 48 s A promotional video for Xinjiang-based supplier Golden Future featuring clothes sold by US retailer Kohl's.

"Although we do not directly do business with Huafu, we have confirmed — based on the organic cotton certificate — that Muji products have used Huafu yarn produced in areas other than Xinjiang," Muji's spokesperson Ms Nishimura said.

Adrian Zenz, an expert on forced labour in Xinjiang, told a US commission looking into China that his "shocking" findings revealed a "perverse combination of coercive training and labour, intergeneration separation, and complete control over family units".

Adrian Zenz said China's internment campaign was being turned into a business of cheap labour. ( ABC News )

"In 2017 China's Xinjiang region embarked on probably the largest incarceration of an ethno-religious minority since the Holocaust," he said.

"Beijing is now turning its internment campaign into a business of oppression, where participating companies benefit not only from huge government subsidies, but also from cheap minority labour.

"Many or most products made in China that rely at least in part on low-skilled, labour-intensive manufacturing can contain elements of involuntary ethnic minority labour from Xinjiang."

Dr Zenz said this "grand scheme" went beyond "China's re-education campaign" — it was "more long-term, more all-encompassing, more intrusive and more devious".