The cost of cotton: no future

Posted on December 8, 2009 by admin | No Comments

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that Uzbek college students are regularly being expelled for refusing to pick cotton.
With that kind of a black mark in their past, any expelled student has little chance of ever completing higher education at home, which leaves the most likely option for survival in a country with mass un- and [...]

More retribution

Posted on November 16, 2009 by admin | No Comments

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 [...]