WATCH: The hidden cost of Labubu dolls slave labor and the Uyghur genocide

Video

Monday, May 18, 2026

OPINION:

Labubu dolls are everywhere — on backpacks, in airports, in metro stations across Washington. But 16 out of 20 of those dolls are made with cotton harvested by Uyghur forced labor.

Rushan Abbas, executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs, joins Kelly Sadler to expose the forced labor behind Pop Mart’s Labubu dolls, detail the horrors inside China’s concentration camps, and make a personal plea to President Trump.

[SADLER] If you could tell us about the piece you wrote, The ugly truth about Labubu dolls and Uyghur forced labor, and why you feel this is so important.

[ABBAS] That op-ed in the Washington Times — I wrote that because just recently, last month, a New York Times investigation team reported with Campaign for Uyghurs Assistance, and they confirmed it that 16 out of 20 Labubu dolls are made with cotton from my homeland, the Uyghur region. And the Labubu dolls are everywhere — riding in Washington metros, being on Union Station, or connecting flights in Danbury Airport, being on United flights up on the sky. I see either kiosks selling Labubu dolls, or I see Labubu dolls dangling from people’s backpacks. And each time when I see a Labubu doll, an uneasy feeling grabs my heart because that doll is not just a toy to me.

It represents modern slavery. It represents genocide, which the United States recognized during President Trump’s first administration, confirmed four years during the Biden administration, and again, Secretary Rubio confirmed this three times. What’s happening to Uyghurs is genocide, crimes against humanity.

And this is personal to me because my sister is in China’s jail right now, almost eight years. And her only crime is because I spoke out. I exposed China’s crimes and mass detention as an American citizen, as a Uyghur American, in September 2018 at Hudson Institute, but they took my sister.

So, to me, you know, it is important to shed light on Pop Mart’s Labubu dolls. The Uyghur region, my homeland, which is called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where over 90% of China’s cotton is produced under the system of state-imposed forced labor. And the Uyghurs are coerced into labor transfers, surveillance, indoctrination, and they are shipped alongside with the cotton that they pick by hand as slaves. They are shipped to the factories in Guangdong, where 70% of Pop Mart’s productions are manufactured.

So what makes this particularly enraging is that Pop Mart is not an innocent bystander. The company’s CEO sits on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a party-run body used to project the Chinese Communist Party’s influence globally. When Adidas China pledged to stop using Xinjiang cotton, Pop Mart attacked them for it. And this is a company that has made a deliberate choice.

So my organization, Campaign for Uyghurs, submitted a formal allegation to U.S. Customs and Border Protection in July 2025, urging an investigation and Pop Mart’s addition to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list. Nothing has been done yet, and that’s why I wrote that op-ed at the Washington Times — to make sure that more people understand the connection between these dolls and the genocide, these dolls and the modern slavery. And the stronger the case becomes for adding Pop Mart to the entity list.

[SADLER] Can you tell me and our audience about your personal story and the genocide going on with the Uyghurs by the Communist Chinese Party? The history there, how you made it to America, why your sister is still in China, and what brought you to this cause to draw attention to their persecution.

[ABBAS] Thank you, Kelly, for giving me the opportunity to talk about that. I was born, raised, and educated in Urumqi, which is the capital city for the region. And geographically, it’s on the northwest corner of China — north of Tibet, west of Mongolia. Size-wise, it’s about four times the size of California. And the population is about 20 million Uyghur, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz ethnic groups, which China tried to say — just to make us look like just a small minority — and their official numbers show only 11 to 12 million, but in reality, it’s about 20 million Uyghur people. And because of our ethnicity, because of our culture, our religion, and the language we speak, we have been always subject to China’s oppression. Ever since the People’s Republic of China was established under the Chinese Communist Party, they always treated us as secondary citizens.