Uzbekistan’s practice of sending forced labourers to pick the cotton harvest causes a furore among right groups abroad every year, but now there are rumblings of discontent from within the country.

Students at the country’s National University have taken the unusual step of publicly complaining about being forced to help with the harvest, publishing an open letter to members of their country’s authoritarian leadership on the Dunyo Uzbeklari (World of Uzbeks) opposition website.

Third-year male journalism students were ordered to the cotton fields by the rector and faculty deacon, says the letter, which appeared on the website last week. It is addressed to the prime minister, Shavkat Mirziyoyev; the prosecutor’s office; the National Security Service; the higher education ministry; and the university rector, Mirzo Mukhamedov. “Surely the legislation of Uzbekistan does not mention the responsibility of students for taking part in the cotton harvest?” the students (who remained anonymous, apparently for fear of repercussions) ask in the letter. “Of course not!”

Students who do not wish to pick cotton could cough up 300,000 Uzbek soms to buy themselves out, the letter said. That is equivalent to around $125 (£78.50) at the official exchange rate – or twice a student’s monthly living grant. Uzbekistan is one of the world’s leading cotton growers but the harvest relies on forced labour to help farmers meet government-set quotas. Around one million people, including teachers, students and doctors, were drafted in to help pick the country’s “white gold” last year. The crop, which is mainly exported to Bangladesh and China, brings an estimated $1bn per year into the regime’s coffers.

In 2012, Tashkent – facing international pressure over its widely documented use of child labour to harvest its main cash crop – moved to take younger children out of the cotton fields. However, human rights groups have reported that this merely shifted the burden of forced labour onto older children (including students) and adults. Tashkent denies using forced labour at all.

Reports from this year’s harvest say that forced labour was widely used. Students were sent to the fields and public-sector workers were mobilised, the independent Uznews.net website reported.

Last month the US department of labor reported that Uzbekistan had made “no advancement” in eliminating the worst forms of child labour, although the International Labor Organization (ILO) has noted tentative progress.

“Things are improving,” ILO expert Harri Taliga said on 1 November. “I personally was happy to learn that many of the recommendations made last year after our joint monitoring have already been implemented this year.”

The government conducted its own monitoring of the use of child labour in the harvest this year, with ILO assistance, and found 49 cases of children under 18 in the fields, as a result of which farmers and college directors were fined a total of 12 million sums ($5,000), Taliga said. Uzbekistan reaped 3.4 million tons of cotton this year, President Islam Karimov said in October in a gushing message of thanks to Uzbekistan’s cotton farmers for their “difficult and diligent labour”.

This article originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org