Siemens defends slave labour (again)

‘Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.’ Well it seems the tech bosses over at German giant Siemens have, unwittingly or not, neglected that iron rule of history, judging by the comments this week of its CEO Roland Busch on China.

For over in Germany, the Green Party are a sounder bunch than their sandal-wearing socialist siblings found in Britain. And Berlin’s recently-elected Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has been urging a tougher stance against the communist regime in Beijing because of human rights violations.

Unsurprisingly though, big business has not always been keen to cooperate, given the abundance of cheap labour found in China. And nowhere is that labour cheaper than in the region of Xinjiang, where Beijing’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims amounts to genocide, in the words of the House of Commons.