MORE THAN 570,000 UIGHURS FORCED TO PICK COTTON: AFP

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic minority laborers in China's northwestern Xinjiang region are being forced to pick cotton through a coercive state-run scheme, a report has said, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported.

The research published by Washington-based think tank the Center for Global Policy is likely to heap more pressure on global brands such as Nike, Gap and Adidas, which have been accused of using Uighur forced labor in their textile supply chains.

Rights activists have said Xinjiang is home to a vast network of extrajudicial internment camps that have imprisoned at least one million people, which China has defended as vocational training centers to counter extremism.

The report -- which referenced online government documents -- said the total number involved in three majority-Uighur regions exceeds a 2018 estimate of 517,000 people forced to pick cotton as part of the scheme by hundreds of thousands.

Researchers warned of the "potentially drastic consequences" for global cotton supply chains, with Xinjiang producing more than 20 percent of the world's cotton and around a fifth of the yarn used in the United States coming from the region.

The BBC reported that it had asked 30 major international brands if they intended to continue sourcing products from China as a result of the findings -- of those that replied, only four said they had a strict policy of demanding that items sourced from anywhere in China do not use raw cotton from Xinjiang.

Beijing said that all detainees have "graduated" from the centers, but reports have suggested that many former inmates have been transferred to low-skilled manufacturing factory jobs, often linked to the camps.

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