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Cotton is in, but kids are still out
Today the Veritas human rights group in Uzbekistan distributed their preliminary report on this year’s cotton harvest, with some photos to accompany it. The report is not yet on the web, or in English, so I’ll post its most striking findings here. Activists from the group surveyed conditions in 11 provinces; they recently toured through [...]
The harvest is (mostly) in, but at what price?
This is the question posed earlier this month by the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia. That group’s press release of November 4 broke the stories of deaths and injuries suffered earlier in the harvest. More than just breaking news, the group points out the total complicity of institutions that, in a non-totalitarian society [...]
More retribution
This just in from the Rapid Response Group, a coalition of Uzbek human rights activists. Ganihon Mamakhanov, whose trial starts today, is a Fergana-based activist, arrested at the height of the cotton harvest (October 10) on trumped up charges after local police planted evidence on him. The implications are clear for those brave individuals trying [...]
Expelled for being sickened by cotton
It’s worth reading through the entire (slightly redacted) message below from the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, just to get a sense of the Orwellian humiliations people in Uzbekistan must endure during their annual “cotton campaign.” This student was lucky enough to get reinstated in her institute, from which she was expelled for having [...]
Bukhara U. dean to students: pick cotton or be expelled
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 [...]
Nearly all provinces reporting children in the fields so far
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:
Fergana province is no exception
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.
Kids in the field, September 2009
First reports from the 2009 Harvest
Despite government claims to have “banned” forced child labor, Uzbekistan’s children are not been spared their annual mandatory work in the cotton fields this year. And once again, the government, through the local education departments, is the one forcing them to go.
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