Yet another method of preventing human rights activists from collecting accurate information on forced cotton laborers was witnessed in the fields this past weekend: Secret service employees ran ahead of activists and “advised” cotton pickers to keep silent.
Elena Urlaeva, the head of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, experienced this new method first-hand during her monitoring activities of cotton fields near the town of Krasnogorsk in Tashkent province’s Parkentsky district on September 28.