Chinese, foreign scholars discuss forced labor in US

CHONGQING, July 8 (Xinhua) -- A seminar on the topic of forced labor in the United States as a serious violation of human rights was held Friday in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality.

A side event of the UN Human Rights Council's 50th session, the seminar was attended by experts and scholars from home and abroad.

In recent years, the United States has appointed itself as the "international leader" in the fight against forced labor, and has wantonly interfered in other countries' internal affairs in the name of monitoring their fight against forced labor, said Fu Zitang, deputy director of the China Society for Human Rights Studies.

However, both historically and at the present time, the United States is among the countries with the most serious forced-labor issues in the world, Fu added.

In recent years, tighter immigration policies in the United States have led to labor shortages in domestic factories and farms, exacerbating forced labor in the country, said Qian Feng, a scholar from the National Strategy Institute at China's Tsinghua University.

Scholars attending the seminar said that forced labor is widespread in the United States and constitutes a serious violation of human rights.