Satirical Poster by Association for Human Rights in Central Asia

Demonstrators in France turned out on January 30th, President Islam Karimov’s 74th birthday, to call attention to the dictator’s many human rights violations.

The activists picked the Uzbek Embassy in Paris, but embassy staff refused to accept their petition or meet with the protesters, says fergananews.com.

Among the protesters were members of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, the Association of Christians Against the Death Penalty and Torture, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Amnesty International, the Fiery Hearts Club. They called for the release of all political prisoners in Uzbekistan.

Protest signs including a satirical poster (see above) showing Karimov’s face beaming like the sun over a toiling child forced to pick cotton and the slogan, “Work, Sonny, the Sun is Still High!”

Uzbek Girl 2011. Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights

Organizations working in the campaign against forced child labour have estimated the number of children working in the cotton fields to be from 1.5 million to 2 million. These estimates were made on the basis of extrapolation of numbers based on surveys of limited areas. Recently, two new sources became available which help confirm these figures and indicate in fact the number may be higher.

Uzbekistan is a closed society with an authoritarian regime where independent local and international monitors are heavily discouraged, and the media is not free to report critically without reprisals. Uzbekistan has not permitted the International Labour Organisation to enter the country and monitor the cotton harvest to determine the ages of people working and the conditions of their work.

Therefore, past estimates have had to rely on studies of some provinces and extrapolation from available known data

The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London has published studies of the use of children in the cotton harvest in Uzbekistan for a number of years. The latest study was based on past reports that were updated in 2010. Based on a survey of some areas, SOAS was able to estimate the number of children used in the cotton harvest:

Based on the survey of six districts, and extrapolating on the basis of further evidence, the conclusion was that ‘[p]ractically all school children between the ages of 10 and 15 years old (from 5th to 9th grades) in rural areas and small towns (district centres) were being recruited for the cotton harvest’ (SOAS, 2009: 19). This equates to about 2.4 million children in the 5th–9th grades and means that children picked an estimated 40–50% of the total cotton harvest.

In August of this year, a number of cables alleged to have been obtained from diplomatic sources by the activist group WikiLeaks were published. The release of these cables began in November 2010 and have continued throughout the year, culminating in the largest batch. Among these cables are numerous reports from the US embassy on its meetings with Uzbek officials and representatives of UNICEF regarding the issue of forced child labor.

In a cable dated June 6, 2008, the US Embassy in Tashkent quoted the figure supplied by the state-controlled trade union:

According to a knowledgeable source, the Trade Union of Uzbekistan (a quasi-governmental organization) estimated in 2008 that 1.64 million school-age children were involved in agricultural work, including cotton picking, representing 45 percent of the total number of Uzbek schoolchildren in grades 5 to 11.

Since most of the agricultural work performed by school-children in Uzbekistan relates to the cotton industry, it is safe to say that the 1.64 million children referenced here are involved in cotton-picking.

This cable also mentions non-governmental groups inside the country who have estimated that anywhere from several hundred thousands to 2 million children could be involved in harvesting cotton. In defense of argumentation that there are less children employed than previously, the cable notes the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey performed by UNICEF, a study that was later acknowledged by UNICEF to be flawed. The cable author as well notes that the survey was conducted in March and May 2006, and thus did not capture the use of children during the fall cotton harvest period from September through November.

Although this cable conceded both the NGO estimates of one million and even referenced the official trade union figure of 1.64, in a subsequent cable, a US diplomat contradicted the Embassy’s own previous assessments and claimed that NGO figures were not reliable.

NGOs have continued to press for the entry of the ILO into Uzbekistan, and to gather information about forced labor.

This season, there was a breakthrough when monitors inside Uzbekistan were able to get a hold of a document that indirectly confirms the numbers of children mobilized in one region.

The Paris-based group Association Droits de l’Homme en Asie Centrale (the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, AHRCA) recently was able to obtain an official government document that indicates plans by the authorities to send as many as 170,000 school-children to pick cotton in the Khorezm region.

The document — an official press release — is said to demonstrate the wide-scale involvement of the state bureaucracy in both coercing children and adults to pick cotton, and punishing them if they fail to obey orders.

The press-release, prepared by the Khorezm region Interior Ministry, stated:

In order to have a quality harvest, in the 2011 harvest, we will have a short time frame to mobilize cotton-pickers, a total of 202,641 people, including 34,800 students from colleges, and high schools. 463 temporary residences (302 field barracks), 109 civilian housing units, 52 tents, etc., have been prepared for their accommodation

This type of press release is typically distributed among local mass media and to the participants of staff meetings held nearly every evening during the cotton season at the offices of provincial and district authorities.

As AHRCA points out, if the authorities have given the total of 202,641 in their province, and the 34,800 college students are subtracted from that figure, the remainder is 167,841 people — and these are likely to be even younger students.

(In Uzbekistan, where children attend school for 10 years, “college” means a high-school level vocational school or academy for older teens).

While there is only an indirect indication that this figure of nearly 170,000 is a reference to school-age children, it’s very likely that for the purposes of planning, this is what is intended, since officials would know the exact number of students enrolled. If the reference was to day laborers, for example, the figure could only be approximate as the large number of labor migrants abroad and the numbers of those returning to Uzbekistan are fluid. If the reference was to teachers or other state employees, they would have been mentioned as a category of people.

Based on the figure of 170,000 out of the population of Khorezm, which constitutes 6% of all 13 cotton-producing regions of Uzbekistan, the likely number of schoolchildren mobilized to pick cotton throughout the country is then estimated at 2,797,350 persons, or at the very least, 2.5 million people.

The document also outlines the coercive nature of the cotton industry:

The subjects of this forced labor are not only schoolchildren and students, but the farmers themselves. Criminal proceedings are brought against those who plant anything other than cotton in their fields, such as more profitable crops, or those who allow livestock to graze in their fields. Two typical details from the press release of the Ministry of Internal Affairs:

1) “As a result of measures taken by law enforcement bodies, we have identified 230 cases of rice cultivation without permission, and among them 222 cases at farms and 8 cases of partial allotments, a total of 941 hectares…According to these facts, materials were prepared and brought to the courts to take action in accordance with the law.”

2) “…On June 2, 2011 in the village of Boshkirshik, Yangibazar district, in the cotton field at the Istikbol Farm owned by Atadjanov Saparboy (date of birth: 09/30/1956), a cow trampled 293 cotton bushes on a 95.4 square kilometer area.”

For this “offense,” the farmer’s cow was confiscated, slaughtered, and the meat was turned over to other agencies.

“This document demonstrates that the government of Uzbekistan does not intend to change anything in the command economy established in the cotton industry, with its usual practice of mass forced labor of workers sent to pick cotton each autumn,” says AHRCA.

“In our view, the only way to persuade the Uzbek government to stop the Stalinist practice of forced labor is to conduct a boycott of its cotton and textiles,” says AHRCA.

AHRCA has called upon the European Parliament to reject pending legislation that would give preferential tariffs for Uzbek textiles exported to Europe and to abolish the Generalized System of Preferences for Uzbek cotton and textiles.

Uzbek children, 2011. Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights

Little children loading what they've picked

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 might be expected to protest this mass enslavement, or at least offer some support to the victims, namely, trade unions and healthcare organizations.  Read the full release after the break.

Association for Human Rights in Central Asia

Centre MBE 140, 16, rue de Docteur Leroy, 72000 LE MANS  FRANCE

Tel.: +33 6 13 41 40 70;   E-Mail: asiecentrale@ neuf.fr

November 4, 2009

Uzbekistan’s 2009 cotton harvest is in, but at what price?

The country’s top leadership has issued the list of the leading cotton producing districts in this year’s harvest.  Among them are the Gurlen district of Khorezm province and the Ellikkalin district of the Karakalpakstan autonomous republic.  See below for a selection of the evidence of forced labor in these and other districts, as well as information on cases of illness and even death resulting from the state’s poor organization of harvest labor.

October 2009

Three hundred fifty medical workers split into six groups took part in harvesting cotton in Khorezm’s Iangibazar district.  They were charged with picking a quota of 60 kg per day, totaling over 15 tons daily.  One hundred fifty of the medical workers from the Iangibazar district central hospital were assigned to one Iangibazar farm alone; they were under obligation to gather 120 tons of cotton.  During the course of their work there were cases of fevers and intensified chronic illnesses among the rural residents picking cotton in the same fields.  That segment of the population generally does not have money to purchase medications or to see doctors, which aids in spreading colds and other viruses throughout the villages.  At the same time, since medical personnel are distracted from their primary occupation in the fall [when they are out picking cotton], the level of care provided for infectious disease patients is lowered.

* * *

On October 13, an employee of the Khorezm Oncological Center, G.U. (name withheld to protect the victim’s privacy), born in 1982, was beaten, robbed and raped on her way home from picking cotton in the Urgench district.  At 7 pm she was walking home in an unpopulated area along the highway when she was attacked by an unknown man, 25 kilometers from the center of Urgench.  She was hospitalized in critical condition.

Usually G.U.’s husband walked her home from work but could not that day.  After this incident her husband’s family cut off any contact with G.U.  In rural Uzbekistan due to particular cultural and religious traditions and the prevailing popular mentality, the victim is usually blamed in these circumstances, which only intensifies her trauma. Her husband had previously requested that her employer, the Oncological Center, exempt her from picking cotton, but the head doctor (Svetlana Ibragimova Palvanova) refused, citing the need to fulfill the district governor’s instructions to mobilize all workers to bring in the cotton.

The local police detained the [alleged] attacker shortly thereafter, and are currently investigating the crime.

The victim continues to experience traumatic effects, the future impact of which it is difficult to predict.  Nevertheless, G.U. is not planning to sue her employer who failed to provide safe conditions during the work day.  Labor law requires that employers must supply workers with transportation if those workers are required to carry out tasks that require supplemental transport to different worksites. However in Uzbekistan very few workers are aware of their rights set out in collective bargaining agreements or even in national legislation.  There is a high level of unemployment in the country and so many citizens withstand unbelievable humiliation just to preserve their jobs.  Enterprise directors prefer to follow the unwritten directives of their higher ups, experience shows, for the very same reason—to preserve their own jobs, which confer status in society and material benefits.

The management of the Khorezm oncological center is doing its utmost to prevent the discovery of any written orders to the victim regarding the cotton harvest.  It seems, therefore, that no one is planning to compensate the victim for her physical and moral suffering…?

* * *

A cotton-harvest related automobile crash in the Urgench district of Khorezm province on October 26 took the life of a 28 year old doctor.  A bus carrying employees of the Urgench central district hospital was returning from the cotton fields when it was struck in the side by a wagon carrying cotton which had uncoupled from its tractor on a poor stretch of road.  In addition to the doctor, two hospital employees were hospitalized in critical condition and two other bus passengers were injured.

* * *

The Association for Human Rights in Central Asia has concluded that the organizers of this year’s cotton harvest were not able to provide workers with free choice of employment or with fair conditions of employment, as laid out in article 37 of the Constitution of Uzbekistan.

The Republic of Uzbekistan Labor Code, which came into force on April 1 1996 contains more than thirty articles directly related to worker protection.  For example, article 241 forbids persons younger than 18 years of age from engaging in work that is harmful to health.  This national norm applies not only to those up to the age of 15 (as specified in the law On Guarantees of the Rights of Children), but covers fully all persons up to age 18.

The last list of territories where work conditions are pronounced harmful to health was promulgated by the government in 1996; the lack of a current list prevents persons living and working in those zones from receiving state benefit payments.

Labor unions in the country are completely inactive, playing very little role in relations between employees and workers.  It is noteworthy that the chairman of the Federation of Labor Unions of Uzbekistan serves at the same time as a member of the government.  This crudely violates the fundamental principles of labor union organizing, the independence of unions from the executive branch of government, from local government, and other social and political groups.  It is for this reason that the Uzbekistan federation is still not accepted as a member of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

* * *

Members of the Association have documented photographically the use of forced child labor in those regions praised as “first rate” cotton producers by the government, including the Gurlen district of Khorezm province.  In the Ellikalin district of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, young people worked in fields sprayed with toxic chemicals, and as a result, many of them contracted intestinal illnesses.  Medical offices have refused either to register those illnesses ro to document their likely cause.

Yodgar Obid; photo courtesy of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia

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 they go like prisoners

Little hands, little slaves

Row after row, sack after sack

With tears and consumptive wheeze;

Stunted lives, a horrible tale,

Little hands, little slaves

The English translation is based on this line-by-line Russian rendering, by Nadezhda Ataeva:

The original Uzbek:

Habib Usmon’s Russian version:

Терзал детей мороз, рвал ветер.

И вой был гимном той ходьбы.

И дрожь ручонок так заметна.

В колонне[1] – юные рабы

Зияют дыры обуви галошной

Рвань на плечах, как мрачный перст судьбы

И кашля треск  понять не сложно

В колонне – юные рабы

Незрелый ум, надежды сладость.

Погибло все. Ушли мечты.

В конце пути как мало их осталось.

В колонне – юные рабы.

Над грядкой рук полет короткий

Да слезный лед не скроют пустоты

Той жизни, вмиг убитой хлопком.

В колонне – юные рабы.

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.

In one Namangan school, remarkably, a group of parents banded together to protest and kept their children out of the fields. But by mid-October the authorities increased their threats and the parents were forced to acquiesce.

Seven children’s deaths were registered by the groups’s researchers during the 2008 harvest.