Uzbek teachers forced to work at military base

18.12.13 23:17

Uzbek teachers forced to work at military base

Military personnel of the town of Tojtepa in Tashkent province forced the town’s teachers to clean up the Ministry of Emergence Services military base.

Such exploitation of teachers by the Tojtepa military is unprecedented even in Uzbekistan where forced labor is wide-spread.

It became known that teachers and officials from Tojtepa school Number 4 were forced under the threat of dismissal to clean up an empty military base that belongs to the Ministry of Emergency Services on the edge of the town on November 5-10.

It is assumed that the teachers were preparing the territory for the ministry’s training exercise that took place on November 27-29 this year.

The teacher were told they would not be paid for their slabor as they would continue to receive their teacher’s salaries.

During their assigned work shifts they did repairs in the buildings and thinned the brush on the base.

Military base instead of cotton

A school technician, who wished to remain anonymous, told Uznews.net that he was given a choice to either work on the cotton harvest or fix up the military base.

“We were told that we were to work on the base until the others were finished picking cotton,” he says.

The teachers-turned-handymen were picked up daily by a shuttle bus and then dropped back off. They did not have to pay for the bus fare.

Uznews.net was not able to ascertain the exact number of people who were forced to work on the base, but the violation of human rights is evident in this case.

The fact that the people were forced to work pre-assigned shifts speaks to the fact that such use of forced labor is systematic and embedded in the regime.

A teacher confirmed to Uznews.net that “they did indeed thin out the brush and cleaned up the woods around the base.”

Teachers are the slave labor of Uzbekistan

Human rights activist Vladimir Husainov from Tashkent pointed out that the use of teachers in forced labor has a very negative effect on the level of education in the country, in addition to being a gross violation of human rights.

To date teachers have been known to have been forced to act as debt-collectors, credit card marketers, and cotton pickers. Now they’ve also been turned into gardeners.

Uznews.net