Eighth-form pupils from secondary schools were sent to pick cotton in Jizak Region today, while high-school pupils went to cotton fields two days earlier.
Local residents said that schoolchildren had been sent to cotton fields despite government pledges not to force children to pick cotton this year and the country’s ratification of the Convention on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labour.
Ninth, 10th and 11th-form schoolchildren from Jizak Region’s all districts were sent to fields on 21 Septembers and 13-14-year-old followed them today.
A local observer told Uznews.net that schoolchildren from Bahmal, Zaamin, Ravat and Farish Districts had been taken to remote cotton fields in Mirzachul, Zafarabad, Arnasay and Dustlik Districts and that they had not been provided basic living conditions there.
The observer said that these districts were sparsely populated so there were not enough people to pick cotton. He added that there were no safe sources of drinking water in these districts.
A bit earlier students of colleges and lyceums were sent to pick cotton in the region and their living and working conditions are very poor.
Jizak journalist Ulugbek Haydarov, who is living in exile in Canada, has learnt that abuses faced by schoolchildren in cotton fields this year are reminiscent of bullying in the army: teachers and elder schoolchildren beat up younger ones for failing to produce good cotton-harvesting results.
Some students of the Jizak Textile College and the Jizak Industrial College left cotton fields without permission because of physical and moral mistreatment and the absence of basic living conditions.
“The condition of young people is horrible,” Haydarov said. “Children are being beaten up for failing to meet daily targets, while there is not much cotton in fields because of droughts. The authorities do not care about reasons – they just want more cotton.”
Fearing the global boycott of Uzbek cotton by European countries and the USA because of the use of child labour in the Uzbek cotton industry, the country’s authorities tried to avoid child labour at the beginning of the cotton-harvesting campaign. This was a revolution but it had not lasted for long.
The desire to obtain the precious crop has forced the Uzbek government to violate the international conventions it ratified and show its true colours – greed and indifference to rights of even children.
“What is happening in Jizak Region is a signal to all human rights activists and cotton consumers that the Uzbek government does not deserve the relaxation of pressure and that a campaign to boycott Uzbek cotton should be continued,” a local human rights activist said on condition of anonymity.