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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 [...]
“Little Slaves” by Yodgar Obid
Little Slaves
Bitter frost and biting wind at their backs
How it howls and wails;
Weakened and bent, they trudge with their sacks
Little hands, little slaves
Torn galoshes and worn out clothes
They dream of warm sunny days;
Shaking from cough they tremble as they go
Little hands, little slaves
Childish thoughts, sweet dreams
All of them perish, dead and gone;
In their native land [...]
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, [...]
highlights from the video…
Some of the remarkable facts documented by Nadezhda Ataeva and colleagues deserve to be highlighted. Human rights activists from the group monitored the harvest in six provinces, in the western part of the country and in the Fergana Valley. The video does not indicate where the footage comes from. It does state [...]
More 2008 harvest video from Nadezhda Ataeva and colleagues
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