Journalist dies for exposing state-imposed forced labor

Almost a decade ago a Turkmen journalist uncovered the widespread and systematic use of state-imposed forced labor in Turkmenistan’s annual cotton harvest. Forbidden Stories reports that after enduring eight years of persecution, he has died due to abuse suffered at the hands of government security forces retaliating for his reporting. 

Reporter “kicked the hornet’s nest”  

For two months journalist Khudayberdy Allashov worked for Radio Azatlyk, the Turkmen service of the American media Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Over those two months he investigated and wrote about forced labor in the cotton fields where he lived. In Turkmenistan, cotton production is a state-run enterprise, and President Berdymouhamedov runs the country with an iron fist. According to regional experts, Allashov’s reporting “kicked the hornet’s nest”. 

Farruh Yusupov, Radio Azatlyk’s editor-in-chief said: 

“He was persecuted solely for his work with us, every time we would report something from his area…they would come and pick him up.” 

Allashov was arrested for the first time at the end of 2016 just after the publication of an article containing interviews with those being forced to harvest cotton. During that two-and-a-half-month detention, and the multiple other times he was detained, he was tortured with electric shocks and regularly beaten. The authorities say he died of a liver problem due to alleged alcoholism. However, anonymous sources say it was blows received during those torture sessions and being denied treatment for his injuries that were responsible for Allashov’s death.  

Harvest the cotton or you lose your job 

In 2023 The International Labor Organization (ILO) sent an independent observer to visit Turkmenistan’s cotton fields. That observer found “direct or indirect evidence of a widespread mobilization of public servants for cotton harvesting.” These findings highlight the same atrocities Allashov pointed to years ago.  

A teacher quoted by Allashov in his 2016 article who was being forced to take part said: 

“Wherever there’s cotton left that can be harvested, that’s where they take us…there’s no other way out. Either you harvest the cotton, or you lose your job…” 

And despite being officially banned, recent observers say child labor is still very much a part of Turkmenistan’s cotton industry. Several sources found students aged 12 to 17 being forced to pick cotton after school. In addition, children aged six to eight helped deliver the cotton their parents had picked that day. It seems just shy of a decade after Allashov’s reporting, very little has changed about the cotton harvest in Turkmenistan. 

Despite rhetoric, Turkmen cotton flooding into Europe 

In 2018 the U.S. banned the import of all products made in whole or in part with Turkmen cotton. To date the only country to do so. However, cotton harvested in Turkmenistan is still likely finding its way into European stores. That’s because most of the cotton is processed in Turkey, helping obfuscate its origins.  

In November 2024, The Council of the European Union adopted a regulation to ban products made using forced labor “at any stage of production, manufacture, harvest or extraction of those products.” It’s been nearly ten years since Allashov’s first revelations, revelations he died for. But “timid announcements moralizing the textile industry’s supply chains” aren’t enough, Turkmen cotton is still rolling into European store shelves.  

Add your voice to ours and sign our petition in support of strong, mandatory human rights due diligence legislation in the U.S., U.K., and E.U. Allashov died for exposing the systemic exploitation going on in his country. We need to stand up and stop this form of state-imposed forced labor and protect human rights everywhere.