Investigation
- Reading time : 6 min.
Forced labor in cotton fields: the lethal persecution of a Turkmen journalist
Journalist Khudayberdy Allashov died last August, after a decade of persecution by the Turkmen authorities. They accused him of daring to write about systematic forced labor in the country’s cotton fields – an open secret that isn’t stopping some European textile brands from sourcing from Turkmenistan.
Employees of the state water supply company picking cotton in Dashoguz region, in October 2022 – Credit : Turkmen.News
- Forced labor in Turkmenistan’s cotton fields, denounced by journalist Khudayberdy Allashov, continues to this day. Children, supposedly protected, still participate in harvesting.
- Trafficked cotton is then exported to textile-producing countries like Turkey and Pakistan, before being marketed in the EU and elsewhere as manufactured goods.
- We identified at least two brands that were supplied Turkmen cotton via this circuit: Essenza Home and Benetton.
By Cécile Andrzejewski
January 30th, 2024
Farruh Yusupov and Toymyrat Bugayev (Radio Azatlyk) contributed to this article.
Eight long years of persecution. This was the ordeal endured by Turkmen journalist Khudayberdy Allashov, who died on August 13 at the age of 35 as a result of the abuse inflicted by his tormentors in the country’s security forces. His crime? Having worked under a pseudonym for Radio Azatlyk, the Turkmen service of the American media Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), for just over two months almost a decade ago.
“He was persecuted solely for his work with us,” said Farruh Yusupov, Allashov’s editor at Radio Azatlyk. At the time, Allashov was writing about forced labor in the cotton fields of his country, Turkmenistan. In this post-Soviet nation in Central Asia, ruled with an iron fist by President Serdar Berdymouhamedov, cotton is a state affair. After energy, and hydrocarbons in particular, its cultivation represents the country’s second-largest source of money – a highly profitable windfall that relies on a system devoid of accountability.
“The government uses widespread and systematic state-imposed forced labor in the annual cotton harvest,” wrote the NGO coalition Cotton Campaign, in collaboration with Turkmen.News and the Turkmen Initiative for Human Rights, in its report on the 2023 cotton harvest, published in May 2024.
The practice also benefits from “how the supply chain is fragmented” for cotton, according to Raluca Dumitrescu, coordinator of Cotton Campaign. There’s a “race to the bottom, with companies squeezing down on prices. [It] causes a domino effect,” she said. Without forced labor, “inevitably these products would be priced differently.”
Journalist Khudayerdy Allashov is survived by his wife and two minor children. – Courtesy : Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
By recording the words of the Turkmens forcibly conscripted into the cotton fields, Allashov began to expose the inhumane conditions of the harvest. Forbidden Stories and his former employer Radio Azatlyk decided to continue his work on this taboo subject in Turkmenistan. For security reasons, Allashov’s family could not be contacted. The Turkmen government did not respond to our requests for comment.
“Either you harvest the cotton or you lose your job”
Allashov died of a liver problem, which authorities blamed on his alleged alcoholism. According to certain sources, it was actually the blows received during multiple torture sessions and the impossibility of being treated that were responsible for his death. Arrested for the first time at the end of 2016, he first reported on cotton with an article about the harvest in the northern region of Dashoguz, published in November of the same year.
He quoted a teacher forced to take part. “Wherever there’s cotton left that can be harvested, that’s where they take us,” said the teacher. “There’s no other way out. Either you harvest the cotton, or you lose your job…”
The article enraged authorities. Shortly afterward, Allashov and his mother were arrested. The police tried to find his computer and his contact at Radio Azatlyk, but to no avail. Allashov spent two and a half months in prison, tortured with electric shocks and regularly beaten.
When Allashov was released, no hospital agreed to treat him. Although he stopped his work, his ordeal continued until his death. In 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2023, he was again detained and tortured during interrogations by police officers from the same unit in the northern district of Konye-Urgench.
“Every time we would report something from his area, from [Dashoguz], they would come and pick him up,” explained Farruh Yusupov, Radio Azatlyk’s editor-in-chief. “Of course, we decreased the number of reports from that from that region, thinking about [Allashov]. But we cannot just forget about one region because of intimidation. We continued reporting from there using other reporters, working undercover. But nevertheless, they would suspect that it was him, or they would pressure him to tell them if he knew who the source was. But we never used him as a source of information ever since he was released.”
Articles about road accidents, floods, or the cleaning up of a city before a presidential visit might be harmless were it not for “the extreme danger of the Turkmen dictatorship,” as described by researcher Michaël Levystone, author of Central Asia: The Awakening. “Even the factual transcription of an unsatisfactory situation is seen as a personal offense against the President,” said Levystone. “There is no worse country in the post-Soviet space.”
Screenshot of Allashov’s story on forced labor during the cotton harvest.
Cotton: A strategic resource for the Ashgabat regime
Shortly after independence in 1991, Turkmenistan “sank into the most totalitarian of dictatorships,” explained Levystone. According to him, Allashov had “kicked the hornet’s nest” with his reporting. In 2019, when Radio Azatlyk published an article on a disease decimating cotton in Dashoguz, with photos to back it up, police officers promised Allashov “not to leave [him] alone until [he] ends up in the grave.”
Cotton is vital to Turkmenistan, one of the world’s most closed-off countries. In 2022, it exported just under $300 million worth of cotton. “That’s a considerable amount for the country, even if it’s difficult to get precise figures,” said Levystone. Cotton allegedly represents 2% of Turkmenistan’s GDP. The regime keeps a careful eye on the industry and does not tolerate any criticism of its harvesting methods.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) was able to visit Turkmenistan’s cotton fields. In 2023, an independent observer mission gathered “direct or indirect evidence of a widespread mobilization of public servants for cotton harvesting.”
According to our information, Ashgabat refused to allow the report to be made public. Since then, other missions have taken place. The observers were able to travel at will, with their own translators.
Protect your stories
Are you a journalist under threat because of your reporting? Secure your information with Forbidden Stories.
“The ILO observation in 2023 was the first of its kind in Turkmenistan, and the results helped conceive the ILO-Turkmenistan cooperation currently being implemented,” said Miranda Fajerman, a labor law specialist with the organization. “One of the crucial aspects of the ILO’s work in Turkmenistan is the observation of recruitment and working conditions during the cotton harvest.”
Over the course of our investigation, however, we learned that some forced laborers had allegedly been sequestered in order to prevent them from meeting with the observers.
“Any concerns raised during observations are discussed directly with the government,” said Fajerman.
Nothing seems to have changed since Allashov’s articles. From August to December, the Turkmen state forcibly enlists its citizens – whether soldiers, civil servants, or teachers – to pick cotton under the watchful eye of police officers. No equipment is provided.
An anonymous worker tells our partner RFE/RL, “In the morning, [the pickers] gather in the street to be picked up by the truck. At 8:00 a.m., they go to the fields and start harvesting cotton. They take a one-hour break at midday. After the break, they dry the cotton until 6:00 p.m., before weighing it. After school, the students also spin cotton.”
Video obtained during the 2024 cotton harvest, showing kids working in the fields.
Officially, minors are no longer allowed in the fields, by virtue of an order from the Minister of Labor and Social Protection issued in July 2024. However, it seems that child labor is still very much a part of Turkmenistan’s cotton industry. Several testimonies and a video from october 2024 we have obtained attest to this: “students aged 12 to 17,” “schoolchildren forced to pick cotton after school in the afternoon,” and “children aged six to eight who go to help their mothers and deliver the cotton they have collected.”
These working conditions are regularly denounced by NGOs, with the Cotton Campaign leading the way. Since 2018, only the United States has banned the import of all products made in whole or in part from Turkmen cotton.
The Council of the European Union only recently adopted, in November 2024, a regulation aimed at banning products derived from forced labor “at any stage of the production, manufacture, harvest, or extraction of those products” within the European single market. Member States now have three years to implement the legislation. As for the legislation on corporate duty of care, adopted last year by the European Parliament and obliging multinational businesses to respect social and environmental rights, France is now calling for its suspension and Germany for its revision.
Turkey: the gateway to Europe for Turkmen cotton
Meanwhile, despite all the social and environmental commitments made by textile companies, cotton harvested in Turkmenistan is still likely to find its way into European stores. The reason why is simple: the overwhelming majority of it is processed in Turkey.
Map made by Cotton Campaign showing the values of cotton products imported from Turkmenistan in 2022. – Credit : Cotton Campaign
Between 2021 and 2023, 78.5% of declared imports of Turkmen cotton were purchased by Turkish companies, according to figures available on the United Nations’ world trade data platform. Yet, as the Cotton Campaign points out, Turkey is the “third largest supplier of textiles in the EU, [so] there’s a particular risk that brands retailing in the EU are using Turkmen cotton in their products.” This is precisely the case with two companies we came across during this investigation.
The first is a Dutch company, Essenza Home. It sells household linen and pajamas, and comforter covers that can be bought for around a hundred euros. On its website, the company displays its commitment: “Restful sleep is only possible if we produce sustainably, taking into account people and the environment.” In 2016, it even signed the Dutch Agreement on Sustainable Garments and Textiles, which focuses, among other things, on combating child labor and low wages.
However, until recently, on Essenza Home’s website, the list of available suppliers mentionned Dasoguz Textile, a company based in Dashoguz, the region where Allashov was originally from. Dasoguz Textile did not respond to our questions.
“It’s an old list, dating back at least four years. It wasn’t a direct supplier, but an indirect one,” said Essenza Home brand manager Floor Smits, whom we met at the Heimtextil trade show in Frankfurt, Germany, in January 2025.
But Open Supply Hub – a database centralizing supply chain information for the apparel industry, used and updated by actors in the sector – tells a different story. Dasoguz Textile’s name still appears on Essenza Home’s list of suppliers for their clothing items, from June 2021 to June 2022.
“Following an internal investigation, we can confirm that Essenza Home has not sourced from Dasoguz Textile since 2021,” explained Smits, who was subsequently contacted. “In our list of production sites from 2022, Dasoguz Textile no longer appears.”
“We are aware of the very worrying working conditions in Turkmenistan, as well as the tragic story of Khudayberdy Allashov. We strictly oppose the use of forced labor at all levels of the supply chain,” continued Smits, adding that the brand is “fully committed to continuous progress” and “monitors compliance with these standards through external factory audits.” According to Smits, Dasoguz Textile was “a subcontractor of our supplier Evliyaoglu Textile Industry&Trade Inc., but they confirmed to us that they have not worked together since 2021.”
At the same textile trade fair in Germany, a representative of supplier Evliyaoglu Tekstil confirmed that it actually does source its raw cotton from Turkmenistan, but said it “didn’t know” of the forced labor involved in harvesting it. When subsequently questioned by e-mail, the company did not respond.
Support us so that we can continue investigating
We need your help to expose what the enemies of the press try to keep quiet.
By sourcing from Turkmenistan, Benetton is heading for trouble
The second European company is much better known: Benetton. From 2021 to at least January 2023, the Italian firm also sourced from Turkmenistan, specifically the Turkmenbashi Jeans Complex, via the Turkish company Akkus Tekstil. Akkus Tekstil did not respond to our questions, and nor did Turkmenbashi Jeans Complex, which explained that it could only “work with us” “if we were customers.”
In January 2024, Akkus Textile still appears in Benetton’s list of suppliers, but no longer indicates where its material comes from. It now only mentions its own addresses in Turkey as references: a sudden omission that raises questions. In March 2023, the Cotton Campaign coalition contacted Benetton to understand the presence of Turkmen cotton in its supply chain.
When Forbidden Stories got in touch, the brand simply replied that “Benetton introduced a formal ban on the use of cotton from Turkmenistan in 2023. Since then, we have asked all our suppliers to comply with this requirement.” The company added that it “recognizes that compliance with these bans poses significant challenges due to the inherent complexity of the global cotton supply chain.”
For brands, Turkey is not the only way to access Turkmen cotton. Pakistani suppliers also source from Turkmenistan, according to trade data we have obtained. Among them is Liberty Mills. According to our documents, the Karachi-based company imported at least $14 million worth of Turkmen cotton in the form of flannel, fabric, and thread between May 2021 and August 2024. The company did not respond to our questions.
At the Frankfurt trade show, Liberty Mills’ representatives told us that they work with H&M, and even introduced us to Shumaila Iqbal, who is responsible for relations with the brand. “We are not using any cotton from Turkmenistan,” she said. “Turkmenistan has a ban because of the forced labor. We have been told by our customer not to buy there… [for] more than 10 years.”
Confronted with the lists of important goods we show her, she suddenly goes quiet. “I don’t know,” she said, without denying. “This is really surprising for us.”
For its part, H&M told us that all of its direct suppliers “must sign [its] commitment not to source cotton for H&M products from Turkmenistan, where the risk of systemic forced labor is very high. Liberty Mills Limited signed this commitment in 2021. This supplier sources recycled and Better Cotton-certified cotton for our production.”
In response to our data, they asserted, “According to the data that we have, we have no reason to question that there has been a breach of our commitment not to source conventional cotton from Turkmenistan for our products… It is through the different transaction certificates and references that we know what kind of cotton has been sourced for us, which can only be either organic, recycled, or other sustainably sourced cotton… To the best of our knowledge, [our suppliers] only use material from Pakistan, the USA, Argentina, and Australia for our products.”
The stand of Purecot Linen Textile, proudly selling products “Made in Turkmenistan”. – Credit : Forbidden Stories
Farther along from Liberty Mills’ setup, a stand belonging to Purecot Linen Textile, a supplier of cotton thread and fabrics with an official address pointing to the United Arab Emirates, proudly exhibited its “Made in Turkmenistan” products. Small Turkmen flags and a portrait of President Berdymouhamedov accompanied the display. In front of the spools, fabrics, and robes, one of the Turkmen speaking representatives boasted of cotton that “only drinks natural water, no chemicals.”
Asked about the conditions of the cotton’s harvest and the use of forced labor, including that of minors, he interrupted: “I don’t believe you.” According to him, accusations of forced labor in Turkmenistan are “wrong information” spread by “channels financed by somebody, sites that don’t like us.”
The Turkmen flag on a table at the Purecot Linen Textile brand stand. – Credit : Forbidden Stories
Before ending the exchange, he addressed his colleagues in Turkmen, calling us “troublemakers,” before making a series of sexist remarks about us.
Nearly ten years after Allashov’s first revelations, and despite timid announcements moralizing the textile industry’s supply chains, Turkmen cotton derived from forced labor continues to flood store shelves in Europe.
Below are the answers we received to our questions, in full :
See also
