Last Updated Apr 1st, 2020 at 3:31 pm

China is reportedly using Uighurs as slave labor to kickstart its battered economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, according to social media videos trickling out of the communist country.

Bitter Winter reports:

TikTok and DouYin videos pouring out of Xinjiang during the past two weeks have confirmed fears that Beijing is using Uyghur and other Turkic youth as slave laborers and cannon fodder to kickstart the Chinese economy.



Given that the nation is only just getting back on its feet after months of lockdown, and experts still have yet to give the all clear regarding the virus, the clips showing hundreds of corona-masked Uyghurs being amassed at transport hubs around the region with marching orders to work in factories in inner China, are giving Uyghur activists deep concern.



The clips using the popular DouYin Chinese video sharing social networking site have been gathered by Australian-based Uyghur exile Alip Erkin who posts them on his Twitter feed "Uyghur Bulletin." Despite a flurry of negative videos coming from the epicenter of Uyghur persecution last summer, which were all but quashed by the network's creator Bytedance early this year, recent posts have managed to circumvent the firewall to bring the latest news to the outside world.

China reportedly experienced much higher devastation from the coronavirus epidemic than official numbers indicate, according to intelligence reports.

Videos from web services like TikTok have shown hundreds of Uighurs being dispatched from transportation hubs at the same time that Chinese residents were ordered to stay in their homes to help halt the spread of the virus in that country. Some videos depicted members of the minority group happily setting off to work in factories, part of a government propaganda effort to support China's "poverty alleviation drive."