Medical workers from Chinoz and Yangiyo’l districts of the Tashkent region forcibly mobilized to pick cotton
Medical workers from Chinoz and Yangiyo’l districts of the Tashkent region were forcibly mobilized to pick cotton.
On September 18, 2016 the human rights defenders Elena Urlaeva and Malokhat Eshonkulova left the Tashkent region in order to monitor the issue of forced labor in cotton fields among doctors.
As it turned out, in the village council Yallama (in the Chinaz district), in the building of the breeding and seeding laboratory, as well as in the school №18, temporarily live 220 doctors from central clinics and multidisciplinary hospital from the Yangiyul city. They came to pick cotton on September 13, 2016 and will work in the fields for 30 days.
Next to the abovementioned buildings, there are an equipped kitchen and a dining area for the cotton pickers. Doctors sleep in their beds on the floor, food is supplied by the khokimiyat (district administration), and the daily cotton quota for pickers is 70 kilograms a day.
In the school Nr. 6 in the village “Russian Chinaz”, hospital workers and employees of the central hospital Yangiyo’l, almost 200 people, live and pick cotton, and are led by the manager Alijon.
In the school Nr. 28 live surgeons, therapists, doctors working in ambulances, emergency doctors and those working for the intensive care unit Yangiyo’l Raizdrav. Workers of the polyclinic and of the city hospital in Chinoz are picked up by buses every day at 7 am to pick cotton.
All doctors were forced to pick cotton.
Elena Urlaeva report, September 18, 2016
