In a tremendous victory for a campaign in which this blog and other political bloggers played a leading part, Tesco have banned Uzbek cotton from all products sold in their stores and instituted supply chain audits to ensure this is enforced. Tesco must be congratulated on their response to the irrefutable proof of the massive use of child labour forced by a totalitarian state. But this is also startling evidence of the potency of activists, bloggers and consumers in the information age.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2005/08/sanctions_again.html
http://disillusionedkid.blogspot.com/2005/09/look-whos-blogging.html
A Tesco executive, Terry Green, stated:
“the use of organised and forced child labour is completely unacceptable and leads us to conclude that whilst these practices persist in Uzbekistan we cannot support the use of cotton from Uzbekistan in our textiles”.
Many congratulations are due to the Environmental Justice Foundation and to People and Planet for their part in the campaign.