by PUCK LO
Uzbek cotton farmers
Swedish company H&M, the world’s second-largest clothing retailer, is under pressure to cut ties with supplier South Korea-based Daewoo International and others that purchase cotton from Uzbekistan, where the government allegedly forces children and adults to harvest the white fiber for little or no pay. The company has 2,500 stores worldwide including over 230 in the U.S.
“The government of Uzbekistan can only get away with these crimes by finding ways to sell cotton to big clothing companies, so major apparel brands have enormous power to end modern-day slavery,” writes Anti-Slavery International, a UK NGO. “H&M could step forward as a leader, or it could continue to assume everything’s fine, when all indications are that’s far from the truth.”
The campaign against cotton buyers has been endorsed by 124 senior Uzbek human rights activists who have posted a petition on the website of an international support coalition named the Cotton Campaign, that states: “We, the undersigned citizens of Uzbekistan, call for an international boycott of Uzbek textile and companies that use it.”
Forced Labor Practices
Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic of about 28 million people in central Asia, is heavily dependent on agriculture, notably cotton which accounts for one-fourth of its exports. It is the world’s fifth largest producer and third largest cotton exporter.
Anti-Slavery International estimates that between 200,000 and two million children – as young as ten years old – and adults are coerced to work in the cotton fields under “appalling conditions” and meet government-set quotas under threat of expulsion from school, loss of pension or employment, according to human rights activists
People who speak out are threatened and detained, the NGO says, while independent monitors and journalists have been denied entry by the government during harvest time.
“Uzbekistan is the only country where it is the government that organizes and benefits from this practice (child and forced labor),” adds Anti-Slavery International. The NGO estimates that the government earns around $1 billion in revenue from the sale of cotton. “None of the profits are returned to farmers or local communities. The government of Uzbekistan can only get away with these crimes by finding ways to sell cotton to big clothing companies – so major apparel brands have enormous power to end modern-day slavery.”
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