White blossoms with a dark past

Published in Frankfurter Rundschau among others, 21.1.2019

For decades, Uzbekistan’s public sector forced its citizens to join the cotton harvest towards the end of the season, when productivity and wages are too low to regularly attract labour. Since a change in government, this practice, which violates human rights and makes little economic sense, is officially over. But is it really? On an investigation in Tashkent and Berlin, I met activists who had collected documents showing otherwise as well as a labour minister boasting that forced labour had now been prohibited. This is a feature story about uncomfortable truths in a country in transition.

Read it as published in:

© IMAGO

© IMAGO

For decades, Uzbekistan’s public sector forced its citizens to join the cotton harvest towards the end of the season, when productivity and wages are too low to regularly attract labour. Since a change in government, this practice, which violates human rights and makes little economic sense, is officially over. But is it really? On an investigation in Tashkent and Berlin, I met activists who had collected documents showing otherwise as well as a labour minister boasting that forced labour had now been prohibited. This is a feature story about uncomfortable truths in a country in transition.

Read it as published in: