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 knife fight this year, as reported by Fergana.ru.  Put young teens together in barracks over night with little adult supervision, and the consequences can be dire.  Unlike the younger cotton-pickers, remember that children in the ninth grade and older are sent out to the fields for weeks or months at  a time, to live in unheated field sheds.

Sexual violence and STDs

Uznews.net reported earlier this month that the rate of teen girls treated for VD in a Samarkand regional clinic has jumped, as has the number of teen pregnancies, phenomena which a local doctor ties to the two month- (or more) sojourn in the cotton field barracks with little adult supervision.  Whether contracted through consensual relations or via rape,  these cases, too, must be counted as part of the cost extracted by the state's forced labor policy.  Sexual violence can also be suspected in the recent disappearance of a young teacher's college student from the Jizzakh province cotton fields, also reported by uznews.net.

Accidents

Each year schoolchildren are hit by automobiles, or are injured or killed in tractor-pulled cotton wagons coming to or from the cotton fields, and this year is no different.  Radio Ozodlik reported that a sixth-grader named Bekzod was killed October 21 in the Bukhara province.  On October 26, cotton transport accidents claimed several lives, including a student, Hamid Khakimov, in the Khorezm province (killed in a bus accident on his way from the cotton fields) and a woman, age unreported, in Fergana province.  In addition, a little girl was mauled to death by a wild dog while picking cotton in Andijan, Ozodlik also reported.

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 they go like prisoners

Little hands, little slaves

Row after row, sack after sack

With tears and consumptive wheeze;

Stunted lives, a horrible tale,

Little hands, little slaves


The English translation is based on this line-by-line Russian rendering, by Nadezhda Ataeva:

Построчный перевод* **

Сухой мороз. Колючий ветер.

Так и воет… Так и воет...

Идут с торбой, изнуренные от слабости

Маленькие руки. Маленькие рабы.

Рваные калоши. Убогая одеженка.

С мечтою скорее согреться на солнышке…

Захлебываются от кашля, идут и дрожат -

Маленькие руки. Маленькие рабы.

Несозревшие умы, сладкие мечты

Всё гибнет. Гибнет всё.

В родном краю идут наказанные -

Маленькие руки. Маленькие рабы.

Грядка за грядкой. Торба за торбой.

Со слезами в глазах. С тяжелым дыханием [1]... Недозрелая жизнь - ужасная сказка...

Маленькие руки. Маленькие рабы.

# #

[1] Дыхание, характерное для больных туберкулезом

The original Uzbek:

* **

Қора совуқ. Аччиқ шамол-

Зап увуллар... Зап увуллар...

Этак тутиб борар беҳол-

Жажжи қўллар. Жажжи қуллар.

Йиртиқ калиш. Энгил - юпун.

Тезроқ чиқа қолсайди кун...

Титраб борар ўҳтин- ўҳтин-

Жажжи қўллар. Жажжи қуллар.

Мурғак ўйлар. Ширин хаёл-

Бари завол. Бари завол.

Ўз элида ўзи увол-

Жажжи қўллар. Жажжи қуллар.

Эгат- эгат. Этак- этак.

Чаноқ тилган қонли билак.

Мурғак умри - мудҳиш эртак...

Жажжи қўллар. Жажжи қуллар.




# #

16 октября 2009г.

Habib Usmon's Russian version:

Терзал детей мороз, рвал ветер.

И вой был гимном той ходьбы.

И дрожь ручонок так заметна.

В колонне[1] – юные рабы

Зияют дыры обуви галошной

Рвань на плечах, как мрачный перст судьбы

И кашля треск  понять не сложно

В колонне – юные рабы

Незрелый ум, надежды сладость.

Погибло все. Ушли мечты.

В конце пути как мало их осталось.

В колонне – юные рабы.

Над грядкой рук полет короткий

Да слезный лед не скроют пустоты

Той жизни, вмиг убитой хлопком.

В колонне – юные рабы.

[1] В данном контексте слово «колонна» означает образ хлопковой грядки, которая выстраивает хлопкорабов друг за другом - в ряд.

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, hasn't stopped considering the effects of that subjugation to the cotton plan since he was born in the cotton fields back in 1940.  In the next post, you can read one of his latest poems on the subject (in my poor English translation from Habib Usmon's sensitive Russian rendering of the Uzbek). After the break, find Nadezhda Ataeva's (director of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia) thoughtful introduction.

*****

The world first heard the voice of poet Yodgar Obid in the spring of 1940, during weeding of the cotton fields—it was there he was born near the Uzbek city of Mirzachul.

Obid writes of work in the cotton fields from firsthand experience.  He writes of children’s helplessness, and the bitterness of parents unable to save their children from cotton slavery.  He himself helped his mother pick cotton from a very young age, and she, in gratitude, recited to him her own verses.  He listened and dreamed of the day when he would become a poet and explore in verse his own vision of justice.  His dream came true; he became not only one of the best contemporary Uzbek poets, but a unique witness to the cruelty of the regime governing his native country.

Yodgar Obid has spent his whole life speaking aloud those things which many in his homeland fear even to think.  For over seventeen years he has been a forced political exile.  He has never met his grandchildren, seen his children, and has met his wife again only three times.  His only means of communicating for all of these years have remained the telephone, Radio Ozodlik [the Uzbek service of Radio Liberty where Obid is a frequent contributor] and his poetry.

An active figure in the human rights field, Obid tries to bring Uzbekistan’s child exploitation and the lack of free expression to the attention of the international community.  Thousands attend his public readings, where his love of poetry commands the stage.  Obid has dreamed for many years of walking again the streets of Tashkent and being able to speak aloud his work of many years.  The traditional national manner of poetic declamation of the 19th century is a special feature of Obid’s artistry.  For this he thanks his mother, who through her tears spoke her own verses to him as she picked cotton.

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 campus, as reported by Fergana.ru.

Many of these students may be over the age of 18, but some are not.  Regardless, forced labor is a serious rights violation, and a crime.

The willingness of the dean to put this in writing is remarkable, as is his citation of a Presidential decree (of August 20, 2008) "On the organization and the conduct of the cotton harvest campaign" as the legal basis for his order.

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 language site, a couple of them on the Russian site, but none on the English or French pages.  Maybe they just haven't been translated yet.

Anyway, the fair is October 14-15 in Tashkent and I hear the Uzbeks were pretty stingy with visas to attend.  Any participants, of course, would learn about where the cotton is headed...facts the Uzbek government would like (but is not able) to keep hidden.

Press on the fair is a little hard to stomach, touting the high quality of Uzbek cotton, conveniently leaving out the part about being picked by little hands.  The self-delusion of the official press agency is almost sad, claiming as it does that the Cotton Fair will "lead to the future growth of  [Uzbekistan's] international authority." Maybe it could...if they would stop crushing their own future by sending children out to the cotton fields.

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:

Andijon (source: Fergana.ru)
Bukhara (source: researcher, identity withheld, uznews.net)
Fergana (source: researcher, identity withheld)
Jizzakh (source: researcher, identity withheld)
Kashkadaria (source: Radio Ozodlik/Uzbek service of Radio Liberty)
Khorezm (source: Fergana.ru)
Namangan (source: Uznews.net)
Samarkand (source: Uznews.net)
Surkhan Daria (source: Ezgulik human rights society)
Syr Daria (source: Fergana.ru)
Tashkent province (source: Fergana.ru)

To sum up, this leaves out only Navoi district (not too much cotton is grown there) and Karakalpakstan, from which we simply don't have reports yet.

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 with the state's supply of schoolchildren for picking:

“In the early Nineties, we had good cotton picking machines,” said a farmer in the Khorezm region of northwestern Uzbekistan. “In1991, for example, children were not forced to go out to the fields, as the cotton was picked by machines.”

And another farmer added:

“If farmers were given more freedom and were able dispose of the money in their bank accounts freely, it would be possible to gather cotton without using child labour,” said a farmer in the Jizak region of central Uzbekistan. “Many people go to Kazakstan to pick cotton because the pay is better there.”

This year, farmers are being paid (by the government monopsony), according to the article, a princely 30 US cents per kilogram of raw cotton. The solution to this problem is in the government's hands.

One of our sources reports that university students, high school students and schoolchildren in and around Marghilon city (Fergana province) have in fact been sent out to pick cotton.  Some outlets had earlier reported that the provincial leadership was sticking to its promise not to mobilize children.  Our source wrote on October 1:

Yesterday the students of Fergana state university were sent out to the cotton. The provincial leadership supplied the buses and other transportation, as well as bedding and cots. A week ago the college [high school] students in the [name withheld] district were sent out, but they aren't remaining in the fields over night. These students walk out to the fields and back every day. A day or two after the high school students went out, the elementary school students also started to go out to the fields in the morning and come back in the evening.

Including Tashkent province (more on that later), that makes eight of twelve provinces reporting children in the fields so far. The peak of the harvest, mind you, is a week or two away.

Read the article in English here.

It makes for sad reading, with twelve year olds afraid to speak to reporters in the fields due to their teachers and police nearby. Trying to pitch in alongside, the reporters left coughing from the dust and with their hands torn up from the branches and pods. This should remind those who argue cotton picking is "not so bad" for children that it actually qualifies as one of the worst forms of child labor, according to ILO convention 182.