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Christmas shoppers ordering cheap gifts from Temu risk buying items made using forced labour, an MP has warned.

The Chinese app, popular for its huge range of clothing, toys and gadgets at ultra low prices, was downloaded 19 million times in the UK in 2023.

But Alicia Kearns, head of the foreign affairs select committee, told the BBC she’d “long been concerned about the rise of Temu and the risks it poses”.

Temu said it “strictly prohibits” the use of forced, penal, or child labour.

The warning comes after a US government investigation found an “extremely high risk” that products sold on Temu could have been made with forced labour.

The Senate Committee reported the only measure Temu took to ensure this did not happen was to insist that suppliers agree to terms and conditions that prohibit the use of forced labour.

Temu is backed by Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo and launched in the US in 2022.

Since its UK launch earlier in 2023, Temu’s has regularly topped app download charts. The app has 9 million monthly users according to figures given to the BBC by data analyst Sensor Tower.

The online marketplace with the slogan “shop like a billionaire” allows consumers to buy directly from Chinese manufacturers at rock-bottom prices.

It told the BBC by offering more affordable options for everyday items, it had helped “numerous families mitigate the impact of rising living costs”.

Single mum Rina agrees. She started using Temu after watching unboxing videos of people opening packages online.

The 32-year-old, who lives in Bedfordshire with her four-year-old son, says shopping on the Chinese marketplace has helped her save money to pay her rent and bills.

“Sometimes I feel guilty, you know, but I need to prioritise myself first… I don’t like when my son would ask me for something. I want to have some money to buy it,” Rina explains.

She says this Christmas she has spent £100 on gifts, compared with the years before Temu when she spent between £200 and £300.

“As a single mom, I need to be looking for a bargain. It’s scary at first, but it’s just so cheap. So I just disregard the bad things”.

Rina vlogs her shopping on Youtube, and says she was approached by Temu and offered £100 to do an unboxing video.

The company has spent millions on marketing, including brand partnerships with online influencers, social media adverts and even a 30-second advert at this year’s Super Bowl – the price of a prime tv slot like this has been known to be as high as $5m (£3.8m).

Temu’s online search presence is huge – with items from the site consistently appearing in the top results when shoppers use a search engine to look for an item.

Alicia Kearns MP has been one of those “inundated” with Temu adverts, telling the BBC “it’s been difficult to get away from them”.

She is calling for greater scrutiny of the online marketplace to make sure “consumers are not inadvertently contributing to the Uyghur genocide”.

China has been accused of detaining more than one million Uyghurs in Xinjiang against their will over the past few years.

The region produces about a fifth of the world’s cotton and human rights groups have voiced concerns that much of that cotton export is picked by forced labour. China denies all allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

But speaking about a lack of transparency around its supply chains, Ms Kearns warned the reality of cheaper prices could come from a “reliance on slave labour”.

“When you look into where Temu gets its goods from, where in China it is producing them, you can see that these are areas where we know that there is the use of force Uyghur slave labour,” said Ms Kearns.

“My request to Temu would be show us your supply chain. Show us that you are not using Uyghur slave labour,” she urged.

Ms Kearns’ comments have been echoed by leading anti-slavery charities in the UK.

Chloe Cranston from Anti-Slavery called on Temu to provide “full transparency on its supply chain,” while the chairman of Unseen, Andrew Wallis OBE, said “It is imperative consumers, but also governments, know the circumstances and the situations in which goods are manufactured and brought to market.

“The question consumers need to ask themselves is, these are goods that are in essence made by slaves? Is that the kind of gift you want to give at Christmas?”

Temu told the BBC anyone doing business with it must “comply with all regulatory standards and compliance requirements”.

“Employment by all our merchants and suppliers must be voluntary. We explicitly reserve the right to terminate any business relationship if a third party violates our platform’s Code of Conduct or the law,” the spokesperson added.

In the image above, a Dalit (formerly known as untouchable) woman worker limps past an open-cast coal mine in India’s Jharkhand state, where underground fires have burned for over a century.

The photograph is part of a black-and-white series titled “Broken” by Asha Thadani, who has been chronicling the lives of Dalits for seven years.

India’s 200 million Dalits find themselves among the nation’s most marginalised citizens, condemned to the lowest echelons of society by a rigid caste hierarchy.

Quotas in state institutions for Dalits have narrowed gaps in education, income and health. Dalits now boast a thriving chamber of commerce filled with millionaires. Many organisations actively champion their rights. Two Dalits have served as heads of state.

However, a significant number of Dalits continue to find themselves in occupations shunned by others, such as the disposal of dead animals and cleaning sewers.

Theyyam is a religious ritual that originated in the northern part of Kerala.

Here is a Dalit theyyam performer from the state, where these dancers in trance are thought to embody the very divinities they venerate.

“When they become theyyam artistes they become story-teller and medium – living representations of the gods. Even though theyyam is rooted in the caste system, during the performance the upper castes must respect and obey this divine dancer who is of the lower caste,” says Ms Thadani.

Musahars, which literally means ”rat people,” are so poor that their staple diet often comprises mice.

A Dalit community in Bihar state, the Musahars mostly work on the farms owned by landlords and go without work for up to eight months a year.

Facing the challenge of survival and dependent on the unpredictable generosity of landlords, the Musahars have found alternative livelihoods, such as the Nachaniya – a group of gender-fluid entertainers within their community.

These male entertainers, aged 10 to 23, dress as women and perform at village weddings, particularly during the monsoon season.

In a visual hymn to devotion, a Ramnami woman stands pensively at a doorway, her face and shaven head tattooed with the rhythmic repetition of “Ram” in Devanagari script, which is used to write Hindi – an eloquent manifestation of chant in written form.

With each stroke of the wooden needle, infused with ink derived from kerosene-lamp soot, intricate concentric circles and linear patterns emerge, fashioning a sacred tapestry on her skin. The tradition extends to a shawl, gracefully draped around her shoulders, bearing the sacred word.

Born from a late 19th-Century act of defiance, the Ramnamis of Chhattisgarh state embody a distinctive protest, etching visible devotion on both skin and soul – a timeless fusion of faith and identity.

Emerging from the sacred depths of the Ganges in the holy city of Varanasi, a skilled Dalit diver surfaces with coins clenched between his teeth – an evocative snapshot of a life intricately woven into the river’s narrative.

Known as a ‘Gotakhor’ or an expert diver, he holds the coins – offerings from seekers of absolution – between his teeth, leaving his hands free to navigate the river’s current.

The divers are also tasked with recovering the bodies of people who have drowned in the river and are compensated with cheap alcohol, according to Ms Thadani.

“Each dive is a ritual, and every coin retrieved serves as an offering to ease the symbolic journey across difficult waters,” she says.

In a corner of Bihar, these Dalit women resisted upper-caste restrictions on jewellery by developing a unique form of adornment – tattoos.

Using cow dung, bamboo, straw, twigs, and palm leaves to construct their huts, they transformed the walls into canvases.

“Forbidden from depicting Hindu deities, they found inspiration in nature. Today, their [style of] paintings are renowned, serving as a source of livelihood and a testament to the creativity and courage of these women,” says Ms Thadani.

These women are professional mourners, practicing the ancient Oppari mourning ritual deeply ingrained in a community of Dalits in Tamil Nadu.

Traditionally performed as a soulful response to the loss of close family members, Opparis are sung on behalf of or directly to the bereaved family.

These women are summoned to homes where death has occurred, expertly externalising grief in a profound ritual.

This task, deemed “polluting” and reserved for Dalits, challenges societal norms that associate the external display of grief with weakness, a perception traditionally confined to women.

Shiva, from a community of Dalits in Karnataka, is part of a group that burns goat heads outside the meat market in Bangalore (Bengaluru) city .

Goat heads are fire-processed to remove the fur, making it easier to prepare and sell the most expensive organ – the brain. This process is a necessary step in the preparation of the meat.

Exposed to scorching heat, toxic smoke and coal dust daily, those doing this work have a life expectancy of 35 to 45 years. The metal skewers that are used become extremely hot during burning, affecting the sensitivity of their hands as they hold them throughout the working day.

This job is exclusively performed by Dalit males, some as young as 10 to 12 years old, who receive a payment of 15 rupees (18 cents) for processing a goat head.

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An infamous fugitive billionaire – known as Fat Leonard – has been released as part of a prisoner swap with Venezuela, the White House has confirmed.

The fugitive, whose real name is Leonard Glenn Francis, masterminded a $35m (£30m) fraud against the US Navy. He escaped from US custody in 2022.

Ten US citizens held in Venezuela were released as part of the deal.

In exchange, the US released Alex Saab, an aide to Venezuela’s president.

Francis, the most high-profile prisoner involved in the deal, was detained in September 2022 trying to board a flight from Venezuela to Russia while on the run from US authorities.

The Malaysian businessman had escaped house arrest in California two weeks earlier, where he was being held after admitting to his role in a sprawling scam that cost the US tens of millions of dollars and implicated dozens of navy officers.

Prosecutors say he used his Singapore-based business – which had contracts to service US naval vessels – to defraud the US Navy, while also plying American officers with cash and gifts as bribes.

Court documents filed as part of his plea agreement accused Francis of giving US officials millions of dollars worth of gifts, which included lavish trips, “top-shelf alcohol and wine”, Spanish suckling pigs, Cuban cigars and access to prostitution services.

Francis was first arrested in 2013, and pleaded guilty to offering $500,000 (£444,000) in bribes in 2015.

In a statement, President Joe Biden said he will now be “sentenced for his lead role in a brazen bribery and corruption case”.

He said: “I am grateful that their ordeal is finally over, and that these families are being made whole once more.”

The swap deal will also see Mr Saab, a close aide of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, returned.

He faced allegations of laundering money on behalf of the Maduro government, which he denied.

Mr Saab was extradited to the US in 2021 after being arrested during a stopover in Cape Verde.

The Maduro government has long demanded the release of Mr Saab, whom it describes as a “diplomat”.

The Colombian-born businessman was on his way to Iran when he was detained on an Interpol “red notice” while his plane refuelled in Cape Verde in 2020.

The Venezuelan government described him as an “envoy” and argued that he had been travelling to Iran to buy medical supplies during the Covid-19 pandemic.

But Cape Verde ruled that he did not have diplomatic status and extradited him to the US, where he was charged with money laundering and bribery.

According to US prosecutors, Mr Saab siphoned off $350m (£276m) from Venezuelan government contracts by fraudulently using favourable exchange rates.

He then allegedly laundered the money in the US before finally transferring it to accounts controlled by him and his alleged associate.

The US treasury department has described Mr Saab as a “profiteer orchestrating a vast corruption network” that it says enabled “President Nicolás Maduro and his regime to significantly profit from food imports and distribution in Venezuela”.

Mr Saab has denied the charges and the Maduro government has stood by him, even walking out of US-backed talks with the Venezuelan opposition in protest at Mr Saab’s extradition in 2021.

The White House also said Joseph Cristella, Eyvin Hernandez, Jerrel Kenemore, and Savoi Wright were among those released.

It classes six of the 10 Americans released by Venezuela as having been “wrongfully detained”.

The White House also said Venezuela had agreed to release 20 Venezuelan political prisoners, as well as opposition figure Roberto Abdul, and had committed to suspending the arrest warrants of three other Venezuelans.

This is not the first prisoner swap the US and Venezuela have agreed.

In October 2022, Venezuela freed seven jailed US citizens in exchange for the release of two nephews of Mr Maduro’s wife.

Known as the “narco-nephews”, the two men had been serving 18-year sentences in the US for attempting to smuggle cocaine into the US.

Relations between the two countries eased further in October this year when the US agreed to loosen its sanctions on Venezuela in exchange for President Maduro agreeing to allow international observers to monitor next year’s presidential election.

But the US has since reiterated its demand that US citizens “wrongfully detained” in Venezuela be freed and threatened to reimpose sanctions if progress was not made on the issue.

Human rights groups in Venezuela have reacted to the news by demanding that the close to 300 people they list as political prisoners in Venezuelan jails also be freed.