Tag Archives: labour rights

Kazakh court convicts labour union leader

JULY 26 2017 (The Bulletin) — A court in Kazakhstan convicted labour union leader Larisa Kharkova of abuse of office, sentenced her to 400 hours of community service and banned her from holding public office for five years. The authorities in Kazakhstan have been cracking down on what they see as troublesome unions. Human Rights Watch said it was “another nail in the coffin of the independent trade union movement in Kazakhstan”.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 337, published on July 27 2017)

Ex-ILO official accuses WB of wilful ignorance on Uzbek forced labour

Leave a Reply

TASHKENT, JULY 11 2017 (The Bulletin) — In a letter to the FT, Elaine Fultz, a former director for the Central Asia office of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), accused the World Bank of turning a blind eye to forced labour at its projects in Uzbekistan.

She was writing after the World Bank refuted a report last month from Human Rights Watch that forced labour was being used on its projects. The World Bank rejected the accusations and said that the ILO had investigated forced labour accusations in 2016 and concluded that the practice had been stopped.

But Ms Fultz, head of the ILO’s Central Asia office from May 2007 until January 2009 and now a consultant at US-based JMF Research Associates, said that the ILO team that toured Uzbekistan had been too small, too inexperienced and also been accompanied by a group of trade union officials who acted as government minders.

“Under these conditions, the ILO’s failure to detect forced labour in World Bank project areas is hardly surprising,” she wrote. “So why did the World Bank commission the ILO to report on the state of forced labour in Uzbekistan? We must conclude that it did so because it knew precisely what sort of report it would get.”

The issue of forced labour has haunted the Uzbek cotton sector. Over the past seven years Western companies have boycotted garments made from Uzbek cotton because of its association with forced labour.

In its report of June 27, HRW said that the World Bank invested over $500m into Uzbek agriculture in 2015/16 and that it would be impossible for its projects not to be tainted by forced labour.

A World Bank spokesperson told media that it condoned any use of forced labour in Uzbekistan.

“We continue to voice our strong concerns on labour issues to the government of Uzbekistan and we have been working with the International Labour Organisation to put in place a robust monitoring programme,” she said.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 336, published on July 16 2017)

ILO criticises Kazakhstan

Leave a Reply

JUNE 12 2017 (The Bulletin) — The International Labour Organisation (ILO), a UN body, effectively accused Kazakhstan of ignoring its demands made 12 months ago to improve the rights of workers’ unions to operate. In a draft ILO committee memo, it said that the environment for unions to operate had worsened and not improved over the past year. Courts in Kazakhstan have disbanded the biggest trade union and imprisoned two union leaders for a series of unrelated offences. In 2016, unions organised a series of anti-government protests. The Kazakh government hasn’t responded to the ILO statement.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 333, published on June 19 2017)

Kazakhstan jails trade union leader

Leave a Reply

MAY 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan jailed trade union leader Amin Yeleusinov, the second senior union official to be imprisoned in the past two months. Yeleusinov was imprisoned for two years for stealing property. He is banned from union activities for five years and has to pay a $26,300 fine. New York-based Human Rights Watch said that the prison sentence was political and designed to undermine the trade union movement which has gained prominence over the past few years. A court outlawed a major trade union group at the start of the year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 329, published on May 20 2017)

Kazakh court jails labour union leader

Leave a Reply

APRIL 7 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — A court in Astana found union leader Nurbek Kushakbayev, guilty of organising an illegal strike in January and sentenced him to 2-1⁄2 years in prison. His supporters say the sentence is harsh and that the court was being politicised. Kushakbayev had been deputy chairman of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions which was closed on the orders of a court in Shymkent. The government has been trying to curtail the power of the trade unions.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Uzbek authorities detain rights campaigner

Leave a Reply

MARCH 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Uzbekistan detained human rights campaigner Elena Urlaeva, Reuters reported quoting a video message she posted on the internet. In her video message, Ms Urlaeva said that she had been detained, beaten and taken to a psychiatric unit in Tashkent. She is best known for campaigning against forced labour in the cotton industry. She had been due to meet with the World Bank to discuss forced labour violations.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 319, published on March 3 2017)

ILO says making progress in scrapping forced labour in Uzbekistan

FEB. 2 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) said that Uzbekistan was making progress in eradicating child labour from its cotton harvests. Uzbekistan has come under intense criticism for using school children to pick the crop. Several Western fashion retailers have refused to stock products which have been made with Uzbek cotton.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakh authorities are intimidating protesters

ALMATY, FEB 2, 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in western Kazakhstan are trying to intimidate workers into giving up their hunger strikes, the Eurasianet website reported.

The Eurasianet report quoted workers as saying that a breakdown in trust with the authorities was pushing them towards a potentially violent confrontation.

“We cannot allow another Zhanaozen,” Eurasianet quoted a lawyer for a detained union leader as saying. Zhanaozen is the town in western Kazakhstan where police and strikers clashed in 2011. At least 15 people died.

Several hundred oil workers have been refusing to eat in west Kazakhstan in protest over the closure of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, an umbrella organization, by a court in Shymkent at the beginning of the year. The hunger strikers’ de facto leaders, Amin Yeleusinov, and Nurbek Kushakbaev were arrested on Jan. 20

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 315, published on Feb. 3 2017)

Kazakh authorities arrest union leaders

JAN. 26 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The New York-based Human Rights Watch criticised the Kazakh authorities for arresting two union leaders on Jan. 20 for allegedly organising a hunger strike by oil workers earlier in the year against the closure of a union confederation structure. The two union leaders, Amin Yeleusinov, and Nurbek Kushakbayev, have been placed in pretrial detention. The Kazakh government wants to reduce the power of the unions, who they blame for a series of strikes since 2011.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 314, published on Jan. 27 2017)

Hunger strike over union closure grows at oil fields in west Kazakhstan

ALMATY, JAN. 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — At least 400 oil workers in western Kazakhstan have started a hunger strike against the forced closure of the country’s trade union umbrella body, media reported.

The hunger strikers are, mainly, workers at the Kalamkas and Zhetybai oil fields in Mangistau region owned by the state-run Mangistau- munaigas. This is near to Zhanaozen where, in 2011, police shot dead at least 15 striking oil workers.

The US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported that demonstrators were demanding that the government overturns a decision by a court in Shymkent to disband the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Kazakhstan because it hadn’t been

properly registered at its inception. This is the largest workers’ union in the country and analysts suspected that the Kazakh authorities were increasingly wary and worried about the power that it had accumulated.

Since 2011, the authorities in Kazakhstan have generally bent to accommodate the unions, preferring to dodge confrontation.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 313, published on Jan. 20 2017)