Forcing prisoners to repay a debt to society through labor, and forcing the minority you're actively genociding to produce goods feel like two very different things.
I strongly disagree with US prison labor, and our prison system's focus on punishment and repayment rather than actually correcting the behaviors, but it's legal by the US constitution.
I don’t really care if it’s legal in the constitution, it’s “legal” in China too. My point is that I want it changed so there’s no forced labor in a country that that corporations can profit from it since it’s going to inherently drive conflicts of interest and I feel it too often gets ignored in this country.
Yet the overwhelming majority of the time, they've committed a crime. There may be systematic issues in the justice system, and US that lead to the higher conviction rates/arrest rates, but we have the right to appeal, the right to representation, and our criminal justice system is regularly investigated and publicized.
On the flip side, on a mass scale in Xinjiang, people are being systematically targeted, sterilized, tortured, being forced to work, etc. solely because of their culture and skin color.
The two systems are very different. Two things can be bad, and one of those bad things can be substantially worse. It's like wondering why Texas will execute a serial killer, but not someone who punched someone at a bar. Both things are bad, but the scale is completely different.
Having the red line as genocide, or as slavery from the buying and selling of people feels like a pretty safe line to have. Blocking goods is a very serious move in international relations.
The US justice system is not inherently racist, it's systematically racist, which isn't good, but is a different thing. Nearly every person in the US prison system is there because they committed a crime. The people in Xinjiang did nothing but have the wrong culture and skin color. It's still a false equivalency.
Anyone can involve themselves and investigate the US court system, they can file complaints, they can sue for unfair treatment etc. International monitors are barred from Xinjiang.
