Amsterdam/Vienna, 16 March 2021. The two exile Turkmen organisations, Turkmen.News and Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, today issued their joint report “Review of the Use of Forced Labor in Turkmenistan During the 2020 Cotton Harvest”. As a basis for their report, they carried out monitoring in four of the five regions of Turkmenistan — Ahal, Dashoguz, Lebap, and Mary.
The report is available here.
The report gives numerous details about the dysfunctionality of the system to grow and harvest cotton in Turkmenistan.The functioning of the system is marred by the pursuit of fictitious numbers, the lack of transparency in reporting, the arbitrary corrupt behavior of officials on the ground, and the lack of opportunity for farmers to stand up for their rights.
While in the central planning, totally unrealistic numbers are produced regarding how high the cotton harvest has to be, the real numbers turn out to be much smaller, often less than 50 % of the plan, creating the “need” for governors and district associations to overcome the gap.
In one reported case in the town of Turkmengala, every local enterprise including schools and hospitals even had to buy 2.5 tons of cotton elsewhere and to bring them to the cotton reception points in order to improve the “harvest”.
Additionally to the relatively well established system of cashless payments (cheques) the farmers have to make additional “top-up cash payment” for every type of mechanized work and others in order to secure that the work is done properly.
The farmers say that paying a top-up is basically giving a bribe to the providers of seeds, fertilizers, irrigation water, and pest and disease control agents.
At the reception points the farmers are at the complete mercy of the officials there, who often simply deduct some weight from the delivered cotton. “The heads of the cotton reception points sell the withheld cotton to tenant farmers who had a poor harvest.
Or to be more exact, they give them a certificate saying that they handed in more cotton than they really did.
A former agronomist from an agricultural association in the Halach district thinks it is quite difficult to harvest the quantity of cotton shown in the tenants’ agreements, because of the salinity of the soil, the lack of water and fertilizers, the weather, poor quality seeds and organizational failings.
And he brings that the formula: “The administrative-command system of management, left over from Soviet times, and the lack of stimulus hold back the development of agriculture in the country.
Agricultural producers have become serfs, if not slaves.”
As a result, the tenant farmers lose the will to work, and many of them think about giving up their plots of land and of going and working abroad as soon as the borders are open again.
“Turkmenistan should end this irrational agricultural policy of forcing so many farmers to grow cotton, even more in a situation when this is the opposite of profitable for them,” commented Farid Tuhbatullin, chairman of the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights. – “Why not let them decide what to grow and to improve the food security of the country and the material situation of the farmers at the same time.”
Coronavirus schizophrenia
Though the coronavirus officially does not exist in Turkmenistan, strict public health measures have been introduced, and for example people are fined for violations. But these rules are not applied to people being taken to work in the cotton fields. People do not wear masks and they are taken to work in overcrowded buses.
Use of forced labor in the cotton fields
In all regions that were monitored, particularly for the cotton harvest there was the systematic use of forced labor of public sector employees (school staff, medical institutions), students and pupils in higher education, colleges and vocational schools, as well as conscripts.
In case they would disobey, the public employees would be fired, while the pupils and students would get disciplinary penalties or excluded from their institution.
Additionally, the public sector workers had to pay a “voluntary contribution” from their salaries “to the successful achievement of the state plan for the cotton harvest.” But there seemed to be no single, common system of requirements.
For example, teachers in Turkmenabat were obliged to contribute money twice a week, and to go to the fields themselves every other Sunday or send someone else in their stead, in other places the rules were slightly different.
During the eight-day fall holiday (from October 22), all teachers in all regions had to pick cotton or to pay for a hired worker.
Such use of forced labor is a gross violation of international human rights norms (and also of Turkmenistan’s own labor law and criminal code).And the coercion to donate money for the cotton harvest has a negative impact on the well-being of whole families, especially since even many of those with a job can barely make ends meet, given the constant rise in food prices.
Many schools hardly function for these two months, as teachers combine teaching in school with working in the cotton fields.Children also work in the cotton fields, often as workers hired by their own teachers, which prevents them from receiving a full education.
“The Turkmen government has consistently rejected the use of forced labor in the country during the cotton harvest, despite despite abundant evidence to the contrary,” said Ruslan Myatiev, editor of turkmen.news. “From an economic and political point of view, it would be much more beneficial for the country’s authorities to put an end to this vicious practice and begin a dialogue with representatives of civil society.”
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In November 2020, Deputy Prime Minister Esenmyrat Orazgeldiev announced that in future thirty percent of the land used for sowing cotton and wheat can be used to sow other often much more profitable and less fickle crops.
But there was an “if”: if the plan for the production of wheat and cotton has been met in full.And: such a promise had been made already in 2018 by President Berdymuhammedov.
It remains to be seen, whether the set plan for 2021 will be more realistic than i the years before.
Background: In Turkmenistan, agricultural land belongs to the state.Farmers’ associations (and farmers) rent land from the state to grow cotton, wheat and other crops.
Every tenant undertakes responsibility to fulfill the plan for the cotton harvest set by the state.If the tenants do not meet their obligations they are fined and may have their tenancies torn up (their land taken away).
The state has monopoly rights to purchase from the tenant farmers specified quantities of crops at prices set by the state.This extremely bureaucratic system is wide open to abuse by state officials and puts tenants and cotton pickers in a straitjacket.
The cotton pickers, moreover, are public sector employees who are sent to the fields on a voluntary-compulsory basis on pain of dismissal.The post Joint Report of “Turkmen News” and “Chronicles of Turkmenistan”: Cotton production in Turkmenistan: Use of Forced Labor in a Dysfunctional System first appeared on Chronicles of Turkmenistan.