Forced labor in US is slavery in disguise

The United States has, without any evidence, accused China of forcing residents of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region into "forced labor", and imposed sanctions on some Chinese officials and other entities, which China has rightly and strongly denounced as "politically motivated" and based on "lies". But what is the situation in the US, the self-proclaimed upholder of human rights?

President Abraham Lincoln may have declared in the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 that "slaves within any State... shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free," yet slavery still exists in the US, albeit in the form of forced labor. In 2016, the International Labor Organization estimated that about 57,700 people in the US are trapped in modern slavery across 23 sectors including agriculture, sweatshops and sex trade.

In fact, the US State Department has conceded that the country is a "source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor, debt bondage, involuntary servitude, and sex trafficking".