In Uzbekistan, prisoners continue to be exploited despite quarantine

After the publication of ACCA concerning forced labor of prisoners in colony No.42, the staff of the Main Directorate for the Execution of Sentences had to respond and prohibited the use of women in a syringe manufacturing workshop in Tashkent.

The colony’s administration no longer threatened to register a violation for refusing to go to work. At the same time, on March 31, the colony resumed the practice of forced compulsion, taking prisoners to agricultural work to one of the farms in Tashkent region. Initially, teams of 10 men and women were formed. April 6, already 30 people have been taken out to the fields to plant cabbage.

All this time, the penitentiary institutions should already be quarantined. “The administration of the colony violated all the decisions of the government and its own department. I can assume that cheap labor of prisoners makes a profit for interested people,” says the human rights activist Tatyana Dovlatova.

During the regime of self-isolation, effective from April 3 and strengthened on April 6, activists constantly recorded violations of the rules of epidemiological safety in the colony. According to human rights activists, getting information about openly ignoring the rights of prisoners is becoming increasingly difficult. At the same time, intimidation continues in the colony and the demand to stop communication with human rights defenders. While this material was being prepared, it became known about encouraging prisoners, who go to work in the fields. Each of them was given a loaf of bread and promised that agricultural work with their participation was stopped.