Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-12-14-Speech-3-496-000"
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"en.20111214.30.3-496-000"2
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"Mr President, Jordan, a schoolgirl from my constituency speaking about forced child labour last week, said that this needs to stop. With four other friends, she left home at 5.30 in the morning to make a trip to our Parliament with a petition for the President. Jordan went on, ‘I am here to ask the European politicians what they are going to do to stop it’. Well, what are we going to do?
This is something that every MEP should be asking. As the Uzbek cotton harvest ends, there are again reports of children as young as eight being forced to work long hours in the cotton fields. The Khorezm region mobilised 170 000 schoolchildren during the harvest. Eight college directors were reportedly beaten to coerce them to pick cotton.
The Parliament must send a strong message to Uzbekistan that this practice must cease. Uzbekistan has made no credible efforts to end this practice. It does not cooperate with the ILO, despite signing relevant conventions, and it failed to invite ILO observers once again during this harvest. In the Committee on International Trade, we bent over backwards to give the government a hearing but they failed to send anyone to speak to MEPs.
This is not acceptable and it cannot be business as usual. We now need to send a strong message. I want to be able to go back to the children in my constituency to say that we heard their voices because they were speaking up for the thousands of silent voices of children in Uzbekistan. The crimes of the cotton fields must stop now."@en1
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