There are some few organizations on the ground distributing aid directly, and if you are able to, I hope you will support their efforts.  One is Save the Children, which is beginning to disburse aid to suffering families as we speak:  see their announcement here.  The United Nations High Commission for Refugees, which has been providing shelter and other assistance to refugees in Uzbekistan (and maybe on the border?) has its appeal page here (the donation page does not yet allow funds to be targeted for the Kyrgyzstan emergency, but I hope they will soon change that).

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.

While over 25 companies have committed to boycotting the use of Uzbek

cotton until the government ends its abusive labor practices, there are still

many companies that haven’t stepped up to the plate. Gymboree, Hanes,

2

and LL Bean have been contacted and yet they refuse to concretely address this pervasive

problem.

While over 25 companies have committed to boycotting the use of Uzbek cotton until the government ends its abusive labor practices, there are still many companies that haven’t stepped up to the plate.  Gymboree, Hanes and LL Bean have all been contacted, and yet they refuse to concretely address this pervasive problem.

My holiday shopping list sure has changed, and I hope many other consumers will do the same.

photo courtesy of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia

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 19^th 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.

After the first call for a boycott in 2004, many vested interests pushed the argument that farmers and children will suffer most.  Anyone who has taken a careful look at Uzbekistan’s Stalinist agricultural regime, however, can see the falsehood in that.  Let’s hope the number of corporations and consumers who take this seriously will continue to grow.