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"During the financial year 2019-2020, two major incidents disrupted our systematic efforts to identify and manage our human rights risks, namely the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the situation in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China. COVID-19 has had vast consequences for the fashion industry and its supply chain with workers and communities being negatively affected by the disease and the breakdown of global supply chains. The outbreak of COVID-19 has left workers and communities in a vulnerable situation. Efforts to mitigate the consequences of COVID-19 in BESTSELLER’s supply chain are described in our 2019 Sustainability Report.

Research, governments and latest UN Special Procedures have highlighted alleged human rights violations in XUAR committed against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities. During the financial year 2019–2020, BESTSELLER worked directly with one reputable business partner, who operates a spinnery in the region. Our due diligence confirmed that employment practices at the spinnery complied with its labour and human rights obligations. Since the end of the reporting period, we have decided to end our collaboration with the spinnery. Read more on BESTSELLER’s policy on XUAR here."

The evidence above does not refer to modern slavery incidents. Although the company calls them incidents, they refer to COVID and labour abuses in Xinjiang not to instances of modern slavery found in their supply chain. The company also states that they undertook due diligence with a supplier that operates in the XUAR region but that they found the supplier to be complying with its obligations. Therefore, I have changed the answer from Yes to No.