Slave Nation: new report from the Environmental Justice Foundation

Posted on February 25, 2010 by admin | No Comments

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 [...]

LL Bean, Hanes, Gymboree: child exploiters

Posted on December 8, 2009 by admin | No Comments

The International Labor Rights Forum released its list of Sweatshop Hall of Shame inductees for 2009.  They include some of the best-known American retailers of children’s clothing…who refuse to stop profiting from the exploitation of children in Uzbekistan.  ILRF writes:

While over 25 companies have committed to boycotting the use of Uzbek
cotton until the government ends [...]

Poetry and the people’s tragedy

Posted on October 18, 2009 by admin | No Comments

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, [...]

Uzbek activists call for boycott–again!

Posted on June 8, 2009 by admin | No Comments

If anyone has yet to be convinced that boycotting Uzbek cotton is the right thing to do, they need to listen to the people who are putting everything on the line to call for just that: Uzbekistan’s human rights activists, both in-country and political exiles.  These are the people whose friends, neighbors and families are [...]