WHEN Fazliddin Akhrorov was ordered by officials in the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan to give up his studies and pick cotton for three months, he at first refused. Threatened with expulsion from his institute, he was taken away. Within three weeks the healthy 16-year-old was dead.

The authorities claimed Akhrorov, an agricultural student, had suffered a liver disease, but when his body was returned to his family it had bruises on the face and shoulders. Two years later his mother, Ugoloy Igamkula, still does not know what happened. She received no apology and no compensation.

In the past two years several children and university students forced to work in the country’s vast cotton fields have died in mysterious circumstances.

“My son died at the hands of the state,” said Igamkula. “He was either beaten to death or died because he was made to handle pesticides without proper protection. At first the authorities sought to cover up his death. I was told he was in hospital. I cooked him a meal and rushed to his bedside only to find out that he had already died.”

A damning report to be issued tomorrow by International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, claims that every year thousands of schoolchildren, some as young as seven, are forced into the fields of the former Soviet central Asian republics to pick cotton later sold to big western traders.

The practice is most widespread in Uzbekistan, the world’s fifth largest cotton exporter and one of the world’s most repressive regimes. Illegal child labour is also present in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

“All three countries outlaw child labour, and occasionally they issue declarations denying it exists,” the report, The Curse of Cotton, claims. “Yet, during any given harvest, the cotton fields will be full of children, some very young.”

Often the children are forced to spray dangerous chemicals with no protection and left to drink contaminated water. In many cases they are not paid. Those who are receive less than £50 for the entire season. Anyone refusing to take part can face fines, expulsion from school and beatings.

A spokesman for Cargill, a US company with offices in London and Liverpool that buys cotton from central Asia, said that to its knowledge children who picked cotton did so to help their parents during the harvest.

Thomas Reinhart, who runs a Swiss family-owned company that is one of the biggest traders in central Asian cotton, said he had never heard of the use of child labour in the region. “We buy our cotton from government agencies and don’t know what happens out in the fields,” he said.

Such claims anger Akhrorov’s family. “Are they blind?” said his mother. “Everyone knows this goes on but it’s a taboo subject because so much money is at stake.”

Additional reporting: Alexei Volosevich, Samarkand

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