This author has yet to write their bio.Meanwhile lets just say that we are proud Maxie Syren contributed a whooping 58 entries.
A cotton collector from Ferghana wrote a letter to Radio Ozodlik from a cotton field in the Sayhunabad district of the Syrdarya region, asking the radio channel to inform the UN that President Shavkat Mirziyayev’s statement at the UN tribune that forced labor in Uzbekistan had ended was nothing more than a lie. **************************************** Radio […]
Mothers who have been hired to pick cotton instead of teachers and medical staff in the Quyichirchiq District of the Tashkent Region, have had to abandon their children in desperate conditions. Malohat Eshonqulova and Yelena Urlayeva, who carried out monitoring in this district on October 3, came across unattended children and women who had fallen […]
On September 27, 2017, activist Malokhat Eshonkulova visited cotton fields in the Dustlik district of the Jizzakh region where she spoke to cotton pickers. She learned that 1,100 collectors, mostly hired by employees of various tax offices of Tashkent city, as well as the city enterprise TransYol, had arrived in the Dustlik district. One of […]
“A campaign to send 40,000 volunteers from the Fergana Valley to Karakalpakstan has begun. The volunteers’ travel expenses will be paid and they will be provided with food. They will be paid 500,000 soms for 20 days of work. Where possible, mainly men will be sent. Our men from schools and colleges have also been […]
Political Will Needed to End Forced Labor (Washington, DC, October 5, 2017) – The Uzbek government has recalled university students and some health and education workers from forced labor in the cotton fields, the Cotton Campaign said today. Other workers remained involuntarily in the fields or faced extortion to pay for workers to replace them […]
The International Labor Organization (ILO) recently published a report based on a monitoring mission on child and forced labor in the cotton fields in Uzbekistan in 2016. The findings of the ILO’s report are classed as “third-party monitoring” conducted for the World Bank (WB). The purpose of the report is to determine whether forced labor […]
“Bring 5 kg of cotton to school” A secondary school teacher in the city of Ferghana (following the teacher’s request, the school’s name will not be disclosed) wrote to UGF that teachers were forced to collect 5 kg of cotton per day and bring it to school. “The cotton harvest season is over, and we […]
The “Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan” – an informal association of Uzbek human rights activists – has announced that Elena Urlaeva was arrested in Buka city for monitoring forced labor during the 2016 cotton harvest. On November 5th, Elena Urlaeva travelled to the Buka district in the Tashkent region, where the World Bank runs several […]
All third-year college students from the Buz district of the Andijan region have been picking cotton for over a month. According to a student who spoke to Ozodlik, they are forced to search and pick cotton despite the fact that there is no more cotton left as most of it has already been harvested. One […]
In Uzbekistan the imams of mosques are calling on worshipers during Friday prayers to go out to harvest. Some Imams have even passed a resolution that the cotton harvest is Amal Wajib (obligatory in Islam) for every Uzbek Muslim. Money is being collected for the cotton harvest in the majority of the country’s mosques. In […]