Recently, media reported a shocking story about Armenian landowner, who had used slave labor of almost hundred people from Uzbekistan.

While thousands of Armenians are leaving their homeland because of unemployment, people from Uzbekistan are coming to Armenia to find jobs. But quite often these jobs are underpaid, illegal, or in slavery.

Today you can meet Uzbekistanis across the Eurasian territory. Uzbek citizens cannot find work in their homeland, and have to make money in neighboring states.

During the years of independence, the country faced a problem of surplus labor. 3 to 5 million Uzbeks are employed in labor markets of Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. Most of them fall into a developed system of forced labor. There is still no accurate data about victims of labor exploitation.

According to numbers stated in the International Labor Conference in Geneva, held in summer 2012, there are about 21 million victims of forced labor around the world. How many of them are citizen of Uzbekistan? Neither international organizations, nor Uzbek human rights activists can give exact numbers.

High birth rates and a lack of new jobs in Uzbekistan became one of the reasons of the various forms of forced labor.

Yelena Ryabinina, head of the Human Rights Institute “Right to shelter” (Moscow, Russia), explains the situation this way.

“Forced labor is wildness, which is difficult to eradicate, because its main reason is poverty. Poor people are potential victims of contemporary enslavement. The blame for this, in my opinion, lies with the governments of states.”

It is difficult not to agree with her. The mediocre economic and social policy in post-Soviet countries creates the conditions that produce the flow of labor migrants. Because of poverty and lack of prospects at home great masses of people are forced to go abroad. For them, this is the last hope to feed themselves and their families. But often they end up in slavery.

Nobody is preventing the unscrupulous employers and intermediaries to exploit migrant workers, who are in desperate conditions. Corruption is one of the major factors in this problem. Only this can explain the stability of this phenomenon, as it is extremely beneficial for all the participants of the “host state.”

… In April of this year, the human rights organization “Najot” received appeals of Oybek Sobirov from Muhomon village and Gavkhar Nurullayeva from Pichokchi village of Hazarasp district in Khorezm region, Uzbekistan. They spoke on behalf of the 29 migrants, who were forced by fraudsters form Khorezm to work for free in melon plantations in Russia.

One of them, Gulistan Ruzmetova, became sick. Her internal organs were bleeding. But employers denied her medical care. When Gavkhar Nurullayeva demanded justice, employers buried her up to her waist in the ground, and forced her to sign a paper that said she did not have any complaints. At the end, migrant workers were given the money, which was enough only to travel back to Uzbekistan. This was the payment for their hard work full of humiliation and abuse.

This is just a one example out of thousands of cases of exploitation of Uzbek citizens all the way from the Baltic Sea to Kamchatka. Far more bitter proof for this problem are coffins of breadwinners, which are being delivered to Uzbekistan with depressing regularity.

Officials of president Karimov’s regime are neglecting the problems of their own people. At the same time, they are intensifying repression against them. These factors can eventually lead to a social explosion. Authorities are well aware of this.

The Cabinet of Ministers of Uzbekistan even approved a plan to implement additional measures in 2012-2013 of the Convention on the Forced Labor and the Convention on the Prohibition and Immediate Action for the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor, both ratified by Uzbekistan.

As a result, this year hundreds of thousands of children were not forced to collect “white gold” – cotton, Uzbekistan’s great income source. However, employees of budgetary and commercial organizations for two months became cotton slaves. Some of them were paid pittance, some were not paid at all. But this North Korean method of economy has reduced to zero all attempts of lawmakers to change the situation.

Back in 2007, President Islam Karimov signed a decree “On measures to increase employment and improve the activities of labor and social protection of the population.” It was supposed to provide at least 550 thousand new jobs each year. Since then the official indicators showed that job creating plans were fulfilled each year. According to this years official numbers, at least 950,000 people must get employed. Numbers suggest that 773,000 new jobs were created in the period January-September of 2012.

But plans are fulfilled in papers. How can government create new jobs in the autumn and winter season, when the small and medium business almost falls into lethargy due to lack of electricity and gas? And in the countryside there is no work during the whole year, let alone winter.

Resident of Karauzyak district of Karakalpakstan notes: “We do not expect jobs from the government or authorities. Young people are trying to go to work in Kazakhstan or at least in Tashkent. They do not want to work in underpaid jobs in poor farms.”

And millions of able-bodied citizens of Uzbekistan have to seek happiness in foreign lands. Official Tashkent does not care about them. The government, which is quite happy outsourcing the unemployment problem, is only interested in money transfers from labor migrants. But it is quite possible that in these troubled times Uzbek workers with strong muscles can come back to their homeland, and ask “Why?”.