OFILM Technology

Accepted labor transfers outside Uyghur Region

China

Sensors, modules and radar systems

Over the past twenty years, OFILM Technology or (aka Oufeiguang Technology Co., Ltd.) has grown into a world leader in the manufacturing of touchscreens, fingerprint recognition, and smart car technologies. OFILM expanded into the automotive industry in 2015, thereafter producing sensors, modules and radar systems for electric and gas cars.

OFILM Group actively participated in state-sponsored labor transfer programs. Between 2017 and 2019, 1,800 rural surplus laborers were transferred to work at Nanchang OFILM Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of OFILM. In one four-day period in 2017 alone, Nanchang OFILM, “absorbed” over 700 Uyghur laborers from Lop County as part of the county’s poverty alleviation initiative. According to state media, in 2018, OFILM’s Nanchang subsidiary transferred 1,096 students from Hotan area secondary vocational high schools, Hotan city vocational high schools, Guma County vocational and technical secondary schools, in a program that sends them to work before graduating secondary school in a supposed effort to “help their households escape poverty.” In 2019, the Xinjiang Daily reported that the Hotan government had “actively contacted” Nanchang OFILM to ask them to “accept more than 1,300 graduates” to work in its factories. One of the transferred laborers who was interviewed described how she didn’t want to stay at the factory when she arrived.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute first revealed OFILM’s participation in the labor transfer programs. In March of 2020, AP visited the Nanchang factory and learned that “the mostly Muslim ethnic Uighurs [sic] who labor in the factory are isolated within a walled compound that is fortified with security cameras and guards at the entrance. Their forays out are limited to rare, chaperoned trips, they are not allowed to worship or cover their heads, and they must attend special classes in the evening.” A local small business owner told reporters that the Uyghur workers were only allowed to go outside twice a month and said: “The government chose them to come to OFILM, they didn’t choose it.”