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Article

27 Jul 2015

Author:
Cotton Campaign

Turkmenistan: US decisions fail forced labour victims, says Cotton Campaign

"U.S. decisions fail forced labor victims: Turkmenistan placement supports state-sponsored forced labor", The Cotton Campaign, 27 July 2015

The government of Turkmenistan uses widespread and systematic forced labor to produce cotton and deserves to be in the lowest category of the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report...The decision to place Turkmenistan in a higher category only serves to perpetuate the abuse...A new report...documented the Turkmen government’s mobilization of tens of thousands of citizens, mainly civil servants and all under threat of unishment, to pick cotton. Authorities also force farmers to meet annual production quotas...The Turkmen government’s denial of freedom of expression has obliged monitors to report on its use of forced labor from outside the country. "The Turkmen government has maintained a dark cloud of secrecy over its human rights abuses for far too long,” said Ruslan Myatiev...“Turkmenistan may be a small country, but it is the world’s seventh-largest cotton exporter and manufactures garments in-country for major Western brands. It is time the United States increased its pressure on Ashgabat to end its facilitation of human trafficking.”p

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