approximately at the beginning of
September, the classes in school are
suspended, and instead of classes children
are sent to the cotton harvest. Nobody asks
for the consent of parents. They don’t have
weekend holidays [during the harvesting
season]. If a child is for any reason left at
home, his teacher or class curator comes
over and denounces the parents. They assign
a plan to each child, from 20 to 60 kg per day
depending on the child’s age. If a child fails to
fulfil this plan then next morning he is
lambasted in front of the whole class.
The harvest lasts for two months. Rural children lucky
enough to be assigned to farms close to home can walk or
are bused to work. Children farther away or from urban
areas have to sleep in the sheds or storehouses with the
machinery and animals. There are no toilets or kitchens.
Children have to bring their own food for lunch.
The main beneficiaries from all this forced labor are the
political elites, led by President Karimov, the de facto king
of all Uzbeki cotton. The schoolchildren are supposedly
paid for their labor, but only supposedly. In 2006, when the
world price of cotton was around $1.40 (U.S.) per kilo, the
children were paid about $0.03 for their daily quota of
twenty to sixty kilos. Probably 75 percent of the cotton
harvest is now picked by children. In the spring, school is
closed for compulsory hoeing, weeding, and transplanting.
How did it all come to this? Uzbekistan, like the other
Soviet Socialist Republics, was supposed to gain its
independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union and
develop a market economy and democracy. As in many
other Soviet Republics, this is not what happened,
however. President Karimov, who began his political
career in the Communist Party of the old Soviet Union,
rising to the post of first secretary for Uzbekistan at the
opportune moment of 1989, just as the Berlin Wall was
collapsing, managed to reinvent himself as a nationalist.
With the crucial support of the security forces, in December
1991 he won Uzbekistan’s first-ever presidential election.
After taking power, he cracked down on the independent