A year-long BBC Eye investigation has uncovered that Chinese tomato paste produced using forced labour in Xinjiang is likely to be being sold in major UK and German supermarkets. Runako Celina has teamed up with Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, Alison Killing, to find out the nature and scale of forced labour in the tomato fields of Xinjiang, and follow a trail that shows the resulting puree might be ending up on European shelves. Using satellite imagery and shipping data, they track the route the tomato paste takes from Xinjiang to Europe, where they uncover evidence showing there’s a strong likelihood it is being sold on to some supermarkets. The supermarkets all said they took the allegations very seriously. But they disputed the BBC’s findings.
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About the size of Chicago.
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I'm in Almaty, Kazakhstan's second city and a bustling metropolis, to investigate a trail that begins hundreds of kilometers away in the fields of northwest China.
It's a story of serious human rights abuses, mass detentions, and of forced labor.
And it's about where some of the products of that forced labor end up.
I must say, I've never been on a deployment that has made me feel so paranoid and made me feel like I need to look over my shoulder quite as much.
Even here on the streets of another country, those who dare speak out about these things don't feel safe.
We've come to a secret location to meet a man we're calling Mehmet.
After months of back and forth, he's agreed to speak to us.
But he's worried.
He's scared, just like everyone is.
And the paranoia is starting to set in on my side, too.
Are we being followed?
Everyone is frightened to talk.
We all still have relatives in Xinjiang, and if they find out, they will imprison them.
They will threaten them.
Mehmet fled Xinjiang five years ago.