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Grieve…and then give
Readers will forgive, I hope, the non cotton-related nature of this post. No one with even a passing interest in Central Asia could fail to be devastated by the Rwanda-like violence meted out against ethnic Uzbek citizens in southern Kyrgyzstan, by their own compatriots. Reports by newswires, by Fergana.ru, local human rights defenders, by international [...]
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 [...]
LL Bean, Hanes, Gymboree: child exploiters
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
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!
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 [...]
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