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October in the fields
What’s so bad about cotton conscription: Part II, violence and accidents
Each year that children are forced out to pick Uzbekistan’s cotton, many will be injured, sickened, crippled and some will be killed. Their families will receive little or no compensation. A few reports have already emerged on the victims of the 2009 harvest.
Deaths by violence
At least one young person has been killed in a [...]
What’s so bad about cotton conscription, anyhow? Part 1: toxins
There are sometimes blog commenters (and authors!) who downplay the harm to children brought on by their forced stints in the fields each Fall. Never mind that the work clearly meets the standards of the UN Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor. The thinking goes, if I did this back in college and [...]
“Little Slaves” by Yodgar Obid
Little Slaves
Bitter frost and biting wind at their backs
How it howls and wails;
Weakened and bent, they trudge with their sacks
Little hands, little slaves
Torn galoshes and worn out clothes
They dream of warm sunny days;
Shaking from cough they tremble as they go
Little hands, little slaves
Childish thoughts, sweet dreams
All of them perish, dead and gone;
In their native land [...]
Poetry and the people’s tragedy
Literature being the common spiritual refuge for those living under totalitarian regimes, it is not surprising that the literary intelligentsia was among the first to speak out against Uzbekistan’s cotton monoculture in the waning years of the Soviet era. Sadly, they are still decrying it twenty years later. Yodgar Obid, exiled now for seventeen years, [...]
AFT and other groups protest: Uzbek child labor has got to go
October 14 AFT protest: Uzbek kids belong in school
Bukhara U. dean to students: pick cotton or be expelled
Expulsion is a real threat for students at Bukhara State University, according to the dean of the Humanities faculty, S. S. Raupov, if they don’t immediately report to the cotton fields. Those with a “documented excuse” are ordered to report to the University daily and are forced to clean the classrooms or do yardwork on [...]
October’s cotton fair in Tashkent: undercover and out of sight
In past years, the Uzbek government has gone to a lot of trouble to advertise their main venue for marketing their ill-gotten cotton, but this year, I’ve noticed, they’re keeping it pretty much on the down low. Which makes sense. The official news agency UzA has several cotton stories on the Uzbek [...]
Nearly all provinces reporting children in the fields so far
Here is the list of Uzbekistan’s provinces from which we have reliable reports of the mass mobilization of children for cotton-picking, three weeks into the harvest:
Farmers 2009: set us free and we won’t need children
The Institute for War and Peace Reporting has produced some of the most insightful discussions on this subject since 2004, exposing the reasons behind forced child labor on cotton. Their latest chronicle of the start of the 2009 harvest is based on interviews with several farmers who candidly discuss why they go along [...]
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