Tag Archive for: Uzbekistan

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Reports from the Uzbekistan Cotton Harvest 2010

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From: Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights [mailto:cotton.harvest.uzbekistan@googlemail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2010 4:40 PM


Issue 5, October 12, 2010

Context: Forced Child labour is an endemic and widespread practice in the cotton industry of Uzbekistan.  According to experts, between 1.5 and 2 million schoolchildren between ages 10-16 are forced by the local authorities to pick cotton each harvest season from September until the end of November. This practice has been in place and almost unchanged since the Stalin era. Observers claim that forced child labor is orchestrated by the Uzbek central government, which in turn, denies its responsibility for it.

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Silk’s dark side: Uzbek kids made to grow cocoons

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By MANSUR MIROVALEV (AP) – August 30, 2010

KOKAND, Uzbekistan — For one month a year, from morning to night, Dilorom Nishanova grows silkworms, a painstaking and exhausting job. She has been doing it since she was 8.

Uzbekistan’s authoritarian government insists that it has banned child labor but Nishanova, now 15, hasn’t heard about it. She and her siblings, aged 9 to 17, think it’s perfectly natural to be helping their father grow silkworms, as well as cotton and wheat.

“We just help our parents,” she said, her braided dark hair covered with a traditional Muslim scarf. “That’s what children have to do, right?”

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