Slave Nation: new report from the Environmental Justice Foundation

Downloadable here, the latest documentation from the U.K.-based advocacy group should put to rest any government denials of children’s involvement in the 2009 harvest.  Incidentally, upon feeling (ever so slightly) more pressure from European governments and international organizations, Uzbekistan’s government has recently felt it necessary to step up just such denials (more on this later).

Thinking about 2009, it might be possible to conclude simply “more of the same.”  But what stands out is how successful the Uzbek government’s strategy has been, of stepping up repression at home, and obfuscation abroad.

Despite clear evidence of abusive practices, they seem to have sold their entire harvest, quite a bit of which ends up in clothes sold in the West.  From the report:

In October 2009, just as hundreds of thousands of children and adults were compelled by the State to hand pick cotton, the Uzbek Government announced contracts to sell 1 million tonnes of cotton to buyers mainly from Bangladesh, Iran, China, South Korea, Moldova, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey and Japan76. Bangladesh is the destination of a large proportion of Uzbekistan’s raw cotton: the ready-made garment industry manufactures it into clothes, of which 61% are exported to the European Union77. There is therefore a good chance that a proportion of the cotton in goods where the country of origin is unknown, is from Uzbekistan.