TASHKENT - Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - High unemployment levels and
poverty are forcing many people in Uzbekistan to seek work in Kazakhstan and
Russia, where they are vulnerable to exploitation.
Local human rights groups estimate that somewhere between three and five
million of Uzbekistan’s population of 28 million are working abroad in Russia,
Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, and South Korea. Tracking the numbers is
hard because the Uzbek authorities do not acknowledge that labor migration is
widespread.
Many enter the host country illegally, and therefore do not qualify for
benefits or healthcare. Working conditions can be grim, and workers are
sometimes mistreated by employers.
A businessman in southern Kazakhstan who hires Uzbek laborers from over
the border and employs them illegally says he likes them because “they work
hard, they don’t eat much, and the don’t need any documents”.
Human rights groups are concerned that some Uzbekistan nationals are being
sold into slave labor. They say cases of forced labor increase as the season for
picking vegetables and melons approaches.
The human rights group Najot, based in the northern Khorezm region,
reports that 68 people from one district there have been sold and pressed into
forced labor on farms in Russia in recent months.
“They were trafficked by enterprising Uzbekistan nationals, who sold them
to contractors,” Hayitboy Yoqubov, head of Najot, said.
This spring, two labor migrants approached the Najot group on behalf of 29
people they said were enslaved on melon farms in Russia. According to Yoqubov,
they reported that one of the group, Gauhar Nurullaeva from Khorezm’s Khazarasp
district, was buried up to her waist until she signed a piece of paper saying
she was happy with her conditions.
In its 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report released in June, the U.S. State
Department said Uzbekistan was a source country for men, women, and children
subjected to forced labor, as well as women and children subject to sex
trafficking. The report said the government had not shown signs of making more
of an effort to address the problem over the previous year.
In theory, Uzbekistan has laws to combat trafficking and forced labor. In
April, the government approved a plan for implementing international conventions
banning forced labor and child labor.
Rights workers say the authorities need to take tougher action on the
ground.
“The police arrest small numbers of human traffickers, while far more
remain at liberty,” Yoqubov said. “We pass their names to the police, but our
requests are ignored. Even when we secure someone’s freedom from enslavement,
once they return home the police reprimand them for being in contact with human
rights defenders.”
Some observers believe the problem of forced labor can only be addressed if
the economic factors that drive people abroad change.
“The roots of slavery lie in people’s desperation,” Elena Ryabinina, head
of the asylum program at the Human Rights Institute in Moscow, said. “We have to
eliminate the factors that generate labor migration, and change social and
economic policies in Uzbekistan.”
(This story was originally published by IWPR. It is republished
here with permission)