Amid a sustained human rights campaign to end the mass forced labor surrounding Uzbekistan's annual cotton harvest, farmers in the eastern province of Ferghana are saying that they were enlisted to reattach picked cotton onto the bolls of bushes to feign a picturesque snowy-white landscape ahead of an anticipated visit by the country's prime minister, Shavkat Mirzayev.

 

The governor of Ferghana is said to have called for hundreds of men and women to undo the back-breaking work of picking cotton — the nation's main export — and glue the fiber back onto plants that would be seen along Mirzayev's expected route, according to a local resident who informed Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Uzbek Service.