Submitted by crinadmin on
Fresh evidence of child slavery in Uzbekistan’s cotton fields has emerged. Once again, during the latest cotton harvest which began in September, government officials closed down schools and forced children, some as young as nine years old, out of their classrooms and into the fields to pick cotton. Uzbekistan’s booming cotton industry, which is the third biggest exporter in the world, is reliant on the use of hundreds of thousands of children in slavery during the three-month harvest each year. The single biggest destination for Uzbek cotton is the European market. Despite strong condemnation from the European Union over the use of child slavery in Uzbek cotton production, the EU continues to allow the Government of Uzbekistan to benefit from reduced trading tariffs for its cotton imports to the EU despite its own rules that these benefits should be withdrawn. Sign the petition here. Further information
pdf: http://www.antislavery.org/english/campaigns/cottoncrimes/default.aspx