SAMSUNG - CLEAN UP YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN

Sunday 8th August is the final day of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics and will include the closing ceremony. We will mark this day with a protest outside the flagship London store of Samsung – a major Olympic sponsor and also one of the many corporate giants implicated in profiting from Uyghur forced labour in their Chinese supply chains.

At the end of these summer Olympics, attention will turn to Beijing, the host city for the Winter Olympic Games in February 2022. The Chinese government will use the Olympics to bolster its credibility and prestige on the world stage, making use of the fine humanitarian words of the Olympic Charter (even as it breaks the commitments of this charter) to distract and divert attention from its brutal, repressive and genocidal treatment of the Uyghur people.

Uyghur activists and organisations around the world have, for years, been calling on the International Olympic Committee to demand that the Chinese government respect the human rights of the Uyghur people, and allow independent, international scrutiny of its policies in “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” (East Turkestan, as the Uyghurs call their homeland), and to make Beijing’s hosting of the games conditional on complying with basic human rights. The IOC has so far refused to act.

Uyghur campaigners and their supporters are also calling on companies such as Samsung to make a commitment to properly audit and clean up their supply chains, and break links with forced labour and repression. Samsung has failed to take such action.

The Olympic corporate sponsors, who pay in order to have their names and logos on prominent display, are therefore funding the Chinese government’s propagandistic self-promotion.

Join us outside the Samsung Experience Store, 125 Oxford Street, on 8 August to demand that Samsung:

 - Withdraws its sponsorship of the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022, linking this action to a clear call on the Chinese government to end the repression and persecution against the Uyghurs and other national minorities in XUAR / East Turkestan;

 - Thoroughly and transparently investigates its supply chains for evidence of forced labour, cuts ties to forced-labour suppliers, pays compensation to Uyghur communities and denounces the repression;

 - Signs up to the End Uyghur Forced Labour Call to Action – the brand commitment to exit the Uyghur Region and prevent use of forced labour of Uyghur and other Turkic and Muslim-majority peoples.

Please help us keep everyone safe from COVID-19: - Wear a face covering - Support us from home if you or anyone in your household has been told to self-isolate, or has shown COVID-19 symptoms in the last 2 weeks