STATESVILLE, N.C. -- A North Carolina-based company that stocks college bookstores with t-shirts and other team apparel has cut ties with a Chinese company that drew workers from an internment camp.
- Statesville's Badger Sportswear says its cutting ties with Heida Taida Apparel in China.
- The company reportedly used internment camp workers.
- Badger Sportswear was the subject of an Associated Press investigation.
Badger Sportswear said in a statement Wednesday that it will no longer work with Hetian Taida Apparel, nor source any goods from the far west Xinjiang region "given the controversy around doing business'' there.
Last month an Associated Press investigation found the Chinese government had started to force some members of Muslim minority groups to work in manufacturing and food industries.
The investigation tracked recent, ongoing shipments from a Hetian Taida factory inside an internment camp to Badger, a leading supplier in Statesville.