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Wal-Mart to stop buying cotton from Uzbekistan
by Scott Gilbreath ~ October 3rd, 2008
Here’s an informative news item. Not only is Wal-Mart apparently not the cold-hearted, worker-exploiting corporate behemoth of ”progressive” myth, it even has a vice president of ethical standards.
Wal-Mart says it has told its suppliers to stop buying cotton from Uzbekistan, in order to try and put an end to forced child labor in cotton harvesting.
“We have formed an unprecedented coalition, representing 90 percent of the U.S. purchases of cotton and cotton-based merchandise, to bring these appalling child-labor conditions to an end,” Reuters quoted Rajan Kamalanathan, Wal-Mart’s vice president of ethical standards, as saying.
The London-based Environmental Justice Foundation praises Wal-Mart’s action as a condemnation of “the unjustifiable brutality and environmental damage caused by their cotton production for the benefit of a tiny ruling elite, that routinely disregards the pressing needs and welfare of Uzbek people”.
The day after Wal-Mart announced its ban, a political officer at the US Embassy in Tashkent, visited Uzbek cotton fields and spoke with and took photographs of children working there. A local activist accompanying the embassy official was detained, interrogated, and threatened by police.
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