Uzbek girl, 12, in Kashkadarya

Anti-Slavery International, the London-based non-governmental organisation working to elminate all forms of slavery worldwide, brought 13,072 signatures to the European Parliament on December 6, urging that members of parliament reject legislation that would reduce tariffs on imports of cotton from Uzbekistan.

Founded in 1839, Anti-Slavery is the world’s oldest international human rights organisation.

Anti-Slavery spent a year gathering the 13,072 signatures using the popular petitions site change.org and other campaign sites, and through the use of a video, “End Cotton Crimes.” They persuaded pop singer Ricky Martin to endorse the effort, and also got ethical fashion bloggers and online magazines for the ethical consumer to post the link to the petition.

The campaigners hand-delivered the package of signatures to the European Parliament on December 7th.  MEP Catherine Bearder, a Liberal Democrat and supporter of anti-trafficking initiatives, invited to her office school-children who had written expressing their concern about their counterparts picking cotton in Uzbekistan.

As Anti-Slavery writes:

Shannon Harris aged 14, from Eastbourne said: “When I learnt what was going on in Uzbekistan, it was unbelievable. Students my age are supposed to be in school studying but are being forced to work in slavery picking cotton. Why is this still happening?”

The children were inspired by a lesson at school:

Neil Pittman, head of upper school at Bishop Bell, said: “After studying the UN Covention on the Rights of the Child, our pupils were shocked to hear that Uzbekistani children were forced by their government to work during the cotton harvest. The injustice of the situation was very clear to the pupils and they were concerned that cotton harvested by children may be used in the clothes they wear.”

Joanna Ewart-James, Anti-Slavery International’s Supply Chain Co-ordinator, said:

“International law demands immediate action to stamp out slavery and the European Union must consistently work to end this abuse. By rewarding Uzbekistan with trade preferences the EU is ignoring the reality of state-sponsored forced child labour in Uzbekistan.”

During the recent International Cotton and Textile Fair in Tashkent, not a single western buyer signed a contract for Uzbekistan’s cotton, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. This boycott demonstrates the strength of a pledge signed by more than 60 apparel manufacturers, brands and retailers to eliminate forced child labour in the cotton industry.

Jurewicz writes of the growing consumer demand for transparency:

Having buy-in throughout the entire global value chain, where all of the dots are connected, is essential. The time of transparency has come. Consumers and legislation are demanding it.

Consumers are demanding to know more about the goods they are purchasing and, thankfully, new technologies are being adopted to give this information to them right at the point of purchase.

US legislation is also starting to demand more transparency.

Read more here.

Uzbek children working in the cotton fields. Photo by Uzbek German Forum for Human Rights

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament voted unanimously against the inclusion of textiles in the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA), the pact that has governed EU-Uzbek trade since 1999. The vote prevented a lowering of tariffs on EU imports of Uzbek cotton, which make up at least 25 percent of Uzbekistan’s exports.

The language of the legislation now stipulates that the inclusion of textiles “should only be put to the vote by Parliament after international observers, and in particular the International Labor Organization (ILO), have been granted by the Uzbek authorities close and unhindered monitoring.”

The Uzbek government has failed to invite the ILO to inspect cotton fields during the harvest season, despite calls from employers and unions at the ILO annual meeting as well as from the International Labor Rights Forum and other groups.

In February, the European Council approved an amendment to the PCA, extending the customs and tariffs breaks to Tashkent. But the European Parliament had yet to approve it, and it still had to go through committees.

EU members of parliament became concerned about increasing reports of the exploitation of children in the cotton harvest. A coalition of international labor and human rights organizations, joined with Uzbek human rights groups working both inside the country and in exile, have been advocating for some years with MEPs to try to stop forced child labor, especially after Uzbekistan ratified the ILO convention against the worst forms of child labor in 2009.

In June, the EU Parliament held a hearing on the issue and heard testimony from Anti-Slavery International, and other NGOs campaigning against forced labor.

Joanna Ewart-James, Supply Chain Program Coordinator at Anti-Slavery International testified:

Ninety percent of Uzbek cotton is picked by hand, with almost half being picked by state-sponsored forced child labor. Uzbekistan is not a country with which we should be doing business and clearly not with the cotton and related sectors.

Nicole Kiil-Nielsen, a French MEP, asked on her blog why the agreement should be signed, when Tashkent wouldn’t allow the ILO to monitor the cotton harvest. Liam Aylward, an Irish MEP also issued a press release on the issue, and Catherine Bearder and Leonidas Donskis, MEPs from England and Lithuania respectively, lodged queries with the European Commission.

The European Parliament’s International Trade Committee must next vote on the measure on November 22, and the PCA is expected to come to a plenary vote in December.

On October 3, MEP Paul Murphy, a member of the Socialist Party/United Left Alliance from Ireland, member of the Europarliament’s International Trade Committee, organized a panel on Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Nadejda Atayeva of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, who regularly monitors forced labor in Uzbekistan, was invited to testify. A number of MEPs pledged their support for blocking Uzbek textile imports, including Hannes Swoboda, vice president of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, Foreign Affairs Committee member and member of EU-Uzbekistan Parliamentary Cooperation Committee and Norica Nicolai of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, who is vice chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence, and also a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Uzbekistan has generally denied that it uses young children in the harvest, although monitors this season have found children as young as 10 in the 4th and 5th grades sent to work in the fields.

ILO signatories can allow children 15 years or older to work after school, and children of 14 years under certain conditions. But unlikely other countries where agricultural work occurs in a family farm context, in Uzbekistan, local administrators remove students from middle school through college from classes, and then bus them to the cotton fields under threat of penalties for themselves and their families. In the state-controlled agricultural sector, even nominally private farmers must meet quotas and accept fixed prices for their produce.

UNICEF has been permitted by the Uzbek government to make some limited observation of the cotton harvest, but has cautioned that this is not a substitute for the kind of thorough monitoring that the ILO could do of labor practices.

This story first appeared on EurasiaNet’s Choihona blog.

Anti Slavery International

As part of its Cotton Crimes campaign, the London-based Anti-Slavery International has produced a powerful video clip to capture the insidious link between consumption of goods in affluent countries and the forced child labour that produces them in countries like Uzbekistan.

Take a look at the video on Anti-Slavery’s website, leave a comment on their Facebook page and be sure to sign the petition to end forced child labour in Uzbekistan.

Anti-Slavery Day is coming up October 18.

Uzbek child, September 2011. Photo by Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights

Twenty organizations today signed a letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging the US government not to resume “business as usual” with Uzbekistan due to persistent and serious human rights problems such as torture and forced child labor.

The groups included human rights organizations Amnesty International USA, the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, Freedom House, Freedom Now, and Human Rights Watch; labor unions AFL-CIO and labor rights groups International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF and The Child Labor Coalition as well as Tashkent-based organizations such as the Expert Working Group and the exile groups Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights.

The activists expressed concern over approval by the Senate Appropriations Committee that will allow a waiver of human rights restrictions under US law to enable US military assistance to the Uzbek government.

“We call on you to stand behind your strong past statements regarding human rights abuses in Uzbekistan,” the signatories said in their letter to Clinton. “We strongly urge you to oppose passage of the law and not to invoke this waiver.” The Obama administration has called on Congress to support the waiver to enable such assistance as bullet-proof jackets for Uzbek law-enforcers.

The language already approved on September 21 will likely be included in an eventual foreign operations bill voted on later this year, barring the unlikely case of any senator willing to hold up the whole bill over Uzbekistan.

In a separate action, about 60 activists staged a picket today in Washington, DC in front of the Hotel W, site of an all-day Annual Business Forum of the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce (AUCC).

Foreign Minister Elyor Ganiev as well as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Susan M. Elliott were scheduled to speak at the meeting, which included a number of high-level corporate executives from companies doing business with Uzbekistan, such as Honeywell, General Motors (GM), General Electric, and NUKEM.

Participants in the demonstration included the American Federation of Teachers, Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, the National Consumers League, the Solidarity Center and the Coalition of Labor Union Women. They were joined by Yusuf Sobirov and his fellow Uzbek emigre community members active in the Uzbek People’s Movement (also known as the People’s Movement of Uzbekistan).

Judy Gearheart, Executive Director of the International Labor Rights Forum, who helped organize the picket, told EurasiaNet, “We are wherever they are,” referencing the AUCC meeting. “This [picketing] will not stop. We will be dogging them until the Uzbek government allows a high-level International Labor Organization delegation to enter Uzbekistan, and we will keep demanding accountability until the practice of forced child labor ceases.”

Tashkent has not permitted the ILO to enter Uzbekistan to inspect the cotton fields during the harvest, and activists remain concern about numerous reports of student labor used this year, with children as young as 10 bussed to the fields. UNICEF has been doing a limited amount of observation, but has cautioned that this is not a substitute for the ILO’s formal labor rights monitoring, EurasiaNet reported.

On their website notice of the meeting, the AUCC said that recent positive developments in US-Uzbek bilateral relations had been cause for expanding their annual meeting — a likely reference to the waiver approved in the Senate Appropriations Committee and increasing engagement by the US with Uzbekistan for the sake of the Northern Distribution Network supporting the war in Afghanistan.

After the demonstration was publicized, the AUCC removed the detailed agenda from their website, but it can still be viewed here.

GM has been doing business for years in Uzbekistan and plans to open a new $521 million plant later this fall. Labor activists are concerned about reports that workers from some GM shops have allegedly been sent on “vacation,” enabling them to be forcibly mobilized for the cotton harvest by the Uzbek government.

This article originally appeared on the blog Choihona at EurasiaNet.

Due to the positive developments during the recent Annual Bilateral Consultations between the Governments of the United States of America and the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Uzbek Government has decided to substantially increase its level of participation at the AUCC Annual Business Forum. The Uzbek delegation to the Republic of Uzbekistan will be led and represented by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Elyor Ganiev, who will attend the events organized by the AUCC and its members.

The AUCC provided an upbeat perspective on its own role and the need to keep moving:

The AUCC members hope that the U.S. – Uzbekistan Annual Business Forum will strengthen our countries’ understanding of the urgency and importance to engage more at the commercial, political and other levels. As they often say it in the East: Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid of only standing still. The AUCC members are confident that our nations dialogue on furthering bilateral cooperation will continue and the AUCC stands ready to be used as an impetus and a vehicle for letting it grow.

What followed then on the same page — last week — was a detailed agenda for the September 28 meeting and a list of all the speakers and their topics.

Evidently after learning of a planned picket by labor and human rights groups outside the venue, the AUCC removed the agenda from their website.

But you can still see partial evidence of it in the Google cache page preview:

Partial View of Agenda Removed from AUCC Website

…and we saved a copy (see below the fold).

PROGRAM

2011 U.S.-UZBEKISTAN ANNUAL BUSINESS FORUM
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2011
HOTEL W, WASHINGTON DC, USA

9.15 AM
Registration and Breakfast

9.30 AM
American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce: Welcome Remarks
Carolyn B. Lamm, Chairman
American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce

9.40 AM
Republic of Uzbekistan: Welcome Remarks
Elyor Ganiev, Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Uzbekistan – Minister of Foreign Affairs

10.00 AM
United States of America: Welcome Remarks
Susan M. Elliott, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia
U.S. Department of State

10.15 AM
Report from the 2011 United States – Central Asia Trade and Investment Council Meeting
Jonathan Ward, Director for South and Central Asia
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative

10.30 AM
U.S. Government Resources for Doing Business
Danica Starks, Senior Caucasus and Central Asia Policy Advisor
Office of Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, International Trade Administration
U.S. Department of Commerce

10.45 AM
Coffee Break

11.00 AM – 12.00 PM
INVESTING IN UZBEKISTAN: INDUSTRY CASE STUDIES AND SUCCESS STORY
Moderated by Shukhrat Vafaev, Managing Director
Fund for Reconstruction and Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan

11.00 AM
Prospects for Developing Uzbekistan – American Investment Cooperation and Navoi Free Industrial Economic Zone: Opportunities to Produce High-Tech Products for Exports
Davron Dadakhanov, Head of the Department
Ministry for Foreign Economic Relations, Investments and Trade

11.15 AM
Uzbek Oil and Gas Sector: Prospects for Bilateral Cooperation
Djurabek Mirzamakhmudov, Deputy Chief of the Main Directorate
Uzbekneftegas National Holding Company (Uzbek Oil and Gas)

11.30 PM

Presentation by the Main Sponsor of the Event
NUKEM and NMMC: Reliable Supply of Uranium to Western Markets for 19 years
Tim McGraw, Executive Vice-President
NUKEM, Inc.

11.45 PM
Uzbek Chemical Industry: Prospects for Bilateral Cooperation
Khamidilla Shermatov, Chairman
UzChimProm State Company (Uzbek Chemical Industry)

12.00 PM
Lunch

1.00 PM – 2.15 PM
AUCC MEMBERS: U.S BUSINESSES AT THE FOREFRONT OF PROMOTING BILATERAL TRADE AND INVESTMENTS
Moderated by Tim McGraw, AUCC President

1.00 PM
CNH in Uzbekistan
Stuart Campbell, Business Director
Case New Holland

1.15 PM
GE’s Perspective on Doing Business in Uzbekistan
George A. Pickart , Director of Global Government Relations for GE Energy
General Electric Company

1.30 PM
Caterpillar and Zeppelin; Reliable Partners for Growing Uzbekistan’s Economy
Tom Moran, Consultant
Zeppelin International AG

1.45 PM
Uzbekistan and Honeywell: 20+ Years of Partnership
Art Simonetti, Vice President
Honeywell

2.00 PM
GM Uzbekistan: A Partnership For Success
Arturo Elias, VP International Government Relations & Public Policy
General Motors

2.15
Coffee Break

2.30 PM – 3.45 PM
UZBEK, U.S. & INTERNATIONAL BANKING, FINANCIAL AND POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS: ECONOMY, BANKING, ENERGY AND SECURITY
Moderated by Dr. S. Frederick Starr. Co-moderated by Tim McGraw, AUCC President

2.30 PM
The Three Poles of Uzbek-American Relations and Where They Are Pointing
Dr. S. Frederick Starr, Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center
Johns Hopkins University

2.45 PM
Uzbekistan at 20: A Time for New Approaches
Dr. Martha Olcott
Senior Associate
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

3.00 PM
Economic Outlook for the Central Asia Region, Including Uzbekistan
David Owen, Deputy Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department, International Monetary Fund

3.15 PM
Banking and Financial Sector of the Republic of Uzbekistan: How the Fund Can Help U.S. Investors
Shukhrat Vafaev, Managing Director

Fund for Reconstruction and Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan
3.30 PM

Development Opportunities and Challenges for Middle Income Economies
Takuya Kamata
Country Manager, Uzbekistan
The World Bank

3.45 PM
Conclusion & Discussion

4.00 PM
End of the Annual Business Forum

6.30PM
Gala Reception hosted by the Uzbek Embassy
1746 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20036

***

Susan Elliott, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central And South Asia, was schedule to speak, (although was not listed on the public schedule today at State).

On Wednesday, September 28 at noon at the W Hotel in Washington, DC, a number of human rights and labor groups plan to protest the use of child forced labour in the cotton industry as well as other human rights violations by the oppressive regime of President Islam Karimov.

RSVP ONLINE HERE! For more details, visit the International Labor Rights Forum at www.LaborRights.org or contact laborrights@ilrf.org or 202-347-4100.

More information is available now about those speaking at the event at the AUCC.

The decision by the Senate Appropriations Committee to include language in support of a waiver in the foreign operations bill is no doubt among the events indicated by the AUCC in its reference to “positive developments during the recent Annual Bilateral Consultations between the Governments of the United States of America and the Republic of Uzbekistan.”

Those “positive developments” are now leading the Uzbek delegation to expand and upgrade its representation.

Uzbek Deputy Prime Minister Elyor Ganiev, who also holds the title of Foreign Minister, will lead the Uzbek delegation. The US is sending an official who is not at the same level, but still sufficiently high: Susan M. Elliott, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia U.S. Department of State.

Other US government officials who will be present at what is now not just a meeting of businesses, but a meeting of political leaders, are Jonathan Ward, Director for South and Central Asia, The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, who will give a report from the US Central Asia Trade and Investment Council meeting; and Danica Starks, Senior Caucasus and Central Asia Policy Advisor, Office of Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia of the International Trade Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce who will speak on the theme “U.S. Government Resources for Doing Business”.

David Owen, Deputy Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund will speak on “Economic Outlook for the Central Asia Region, Including Uzbekistan” and Takuya Kamata, Country Manager for Uzbekistan for the the World Bank will speak on “Development Opportunities and Challenges for Middle Income Economies.”

Corporate officials from General Electric, NUKEM, and GM will speak, as will representatives from the state-run Uzbek energy companies, but they are almost overwhelmed by the government heavy-weights.

Dr. Frederick Starr, long a friend to Central Asian governments, will also speak.

Uzbek 5th Grader in Karakalpakstan, Photo by Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights

Buoyed by the success of the picket to protest inclusion of Gulnara Karimova in New York’s Fashion Week, the International Labor Rights Forum is planning a picket next week in Washington, DC as Uzbekistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Elyor Ganiev arrives for meetings with the business elite in the capital.

The Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan is infamous for its widespread abuses of human rights and its state policy of forcing children to work in cotton fields across the country. That won’t stop the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce from advocating for continued business partnerships with the brutal Uzbek regime.

Every year, the government of Uzbekistan removes up to two million children from schools across the country and forces them to pick cotton. Reports continue to flood out of Uzbekistan that children and adults are being forced into the cotton fields right now during the current harvest season. This widely documented, abusive state policy enriches a cadre of elites and fuels a regime characterized as “an authoritarian state” by the U.S. Department of State. Uzbekistan is one of the largest cotton producing countries in the world and cotton harvested there by forced child labor finds its way into the U.S. garment industry. Additionally, the government of Uzbekistan has been criticized for jailing independent journalists and human rights defenders, torturing prisoners and a range of other rights violations.

The US-Uzbekistan Annual Business Forum, sponsored by the American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce, will feature top business and government representatives from the US and Uzbekistan including the Uzbek Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Elyor Ganiev. Join us outside the US-Uzbekistan Annual Business Forum to call for an end to forced child labor and human rights abuses in Uzbekistan.

RSVP ONLINE HERE! For more information, visit the International Labor Rights Forum at www.LaborRights.org or contact laborrights@ilrf.org or 202-347-4100.

Islomiddin Dolimov, Uzbek People's Movement. Photo by Judy Skartvedt

Driven from Lincoln Center — the main stage for New York’s Fashion Week — the Uzbek dictator’s daughter Gulnara Karimova moved her runway to Cipriani, a prestigious midtown events space, after organizers proved reluctant to associate themselves with Uzbekistan’s notoriously awful human rights record.

Labor and human rights activists originally scheduled a picket at Lincoln Center weeks ago when Karimova surfaced on the schedule for Fashion Week, sponsored by Mercedes Benz, which enjoys a lucrative joint venture with Uzbekistan to sell vehicles.

But IMG, the organizers of Fashion Week, said they were “horrified” to learn from Human Rights Watch of the torture and political imprisonment in Uzbekistan as well as the used of forced child labor, the New York Post reported.

A spokesman for Karimova’s Guli fashion line said that the show was being relocated “for security reasons,” invoking the 10th anniversary of terrorist attacks on the US, the Post reported. IMG did not respond to a request for comment, but the Post quoted sources denying the security angle. Gulnara herself appeared to be missing in action — disgruntled models and a prominent hairdresser were inconvenienced without the director of their show.

Police requested that a dozen demonstrators at Lincoln Center move across the street from the entrance, making their action less visible. So they decamped to Cipriani, where they found that Uzbek émigrés and members of the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) were already pacing the sidewalk in front of the marbled entrance, chanting “Hey hey ho ho, child labor’s got to go!” and “We won’t buy it, we don’t want it! Uzbek cotton makes us vomit!”

As some demonstrators stood with large posters depicting children hunched over cotton bolls in Uzbekistan, some of the US labor activists’ young children, dressed in campaign t-shirts and sandals and carrying bags of cotton, handed out flyers.

Islomiddin Dolimov, a refugee from Uzbekistan and chairman of the US branch of the Uzbekistan People’s Movement (UPM), said he and other group members had driven from Arizona where they now reside. A witness to the government massacre of demonstrators in Andijan in 2005, Dolimov said he had been forced to leave his family behind still exposed to police harassment.

“They are under pressure and summoned to the police for interrogation every week,” he said, yet he felt he had to speak out on behalf of the many victims of Uzbek government oppression.

Yusuf Sobirov, another UPM member, said his daughters had been forced to pick cotton since the ages of 8 or 9, and were still mobilized from college to work long hours in the fields.

“Children and students can work from 8 or 9 hours to 14 hours a day, and depending on their age and hours worked, they might pick up to 100 pounds and earn only the equivalent of $2.50 to $5.00 a day — from which they have to pay for their own meals and transportation,” Sobirov said

Cipriani turned out several rows of security men, the NYPD set up gates and kept a patrol car nearby, and at least one hefty Russian-speaking dark-suited fellow was busy photographing the demonstrators and saying “no comment” to queries about his affiliation.

The faces of many passers-by lit up in recognition when they saw the protest posters — it turned out they were now familiar with the story of the disgraced dictator’s daughter from reading the popular Post. The Post has had the scoop on Gulnara’s doings all week. Reporter James Covert, who hadn’t covered either fashion or foreign policy in the past, evidently found the convergence of the human rights and fashion topics on his city beat to be compelling.

Picketer's son. Photo by Judy Skartvedt.

Many of the fashionably-dressed guests of the Guli show took leaflets from the demonstrators and said they were just becoming aware of the issue, and a few tottering on high heels ducked in embarrassment. One patron began arguing with a protestor about the need for “stability” provided by strong-armed rule. Uzbek officials deny the exploitation of children in the cotton industry, but have refused to permit the International Labor Organization to send in monitors during the harvest season.

An activist who requested anonymity said she had managed to get a ticket to the show and smuggled herself in to the hall. Yet Gulnara — who cuts an unmistakable figure — was nowhere in evidence in the half-empty room and never appeared on stage with the models. The activist overheard a Guli representative in heated discussion with an unidentified female reporter, who was finally ushered backstage after indicating she would cover “her side of the story.” The activist described the audience as “mainly an older crowd with many Uzbeks and perhaps some heiresses and maybe some Armani people.” Audience members told her they had heard the show was moved due to concerns about “terrorism and 9/11.”

Tim Newman, an ILRF organizer, told EurasiaNet that while this week, Karimova was a focus, he was hoping people would look at the broader goal of ending the purchase of cotton produced using child labor.

“Throughout the last week, we’ve sent a clear message to Gulnara that we — the consumers here — are concerned with what’s going on in Uzbekistan,” he said.

More than 60 companies and a major apparels association have pledged not to source their cotton in Uzbekistan, says Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN), a commitment activists say is significant.

“The Tashkent cotton fair is coming up in October, so we need to make sure that their suppliers down to the bottom of the supply chain are respecting the ban,” added Newman.

Gulnara’s show fizzled in less than an hour, and reporters and protestors outside were still unable to confirm she had ever been there, as rumors circulated that she was still in Europe.

Katya Kumkova provided reporting for this story which first appeared on Choihona at EurasiaNet.

Picket of Karimova's Fashion Show in NYC. Photo by Judy Skartvedt.

Have you been reading all the news about the Uzbek dictator’s daughter and how labour and human rights campaigners were able to convince the organizers of Fashion Week to cancel Gulnara Karimova’s fashion show?

This seemed like an impossibility at one time, as Karimova was here last year and backed by powerful Fashion Week sponsor Mercedes Benz. Yet the organizers responded to the pleas of the cotton campaign and disinvited this symbol of Uzbek repression.

There’s much more we need to do to raise awareness and get action to stop the sourcing of Uzbek cotton by Western companies that help prop up Uzbekistan’s dictatorship.

During Fashion Week (September 8-15), if you live in the New York area, you can take part in a picket in New York to urge the apparels industry to pledge to refrain from sourcing their cotton in Uzbekistan.

You can also call on Cipriani, the events space where Uzbek dictator’s daughter Gulnara Karimova is now rescheduling her disgraced fashion show, not to provide her a space either. (Cotton campaign protests have been successful in getting IMG, the organizers of Fashion Week, to cancel her show at Lincoln Center).

Already 60 brands and a major industry association have pledged not to source cotton in Uzbekistan as forced child labour is used there, thanks to the work of Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN). The International Labor Rights Forum (ILHR) has already successfully petitioned Gymborree, A Child’s Place and other companies recently who have responded to thousands of signatures and changed their policies.

Campaigners are looking for more signatures for new campaigns now addressing these brands:

o Forever 21

o Aeropostale

o Urban Outfitters

o Toys ‘R Us

If you’re a parent of children or teenagers like me, you know at this back-to-school time these are exactly the shops that your kids go to for clothes, accessories and toys. So sign the petition and tell your children that kids just their age are forced to miss school and work in the cotton fields. If you have a teen aged 13 or older, they can help raise awareness and sign these petitions as well at Change.org (you must be 13 or older to use this site) — it’s a great way to help young people understand the connected world they live in. High schools often ask students to find a community service project to work on — learning about forced child labour and signing these petitions to the companies where they shop could be just such a project.