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Yayla Tribal Rugs and Child
Labor:
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Child Labor:
"Fair Business Practices" or
"Bad Men doing Bad Things to Little Children for
Money"?
A few years ago I dropped Yayla from my
list of Trusted dealers.
YAYLA TRIBAL RUGS 283 Broadway Cambridge
MA 02139 USA Tel: (617) 576-3249 Yayla@Yayla.com
I dropped them because of their
involvement in the Child labor issues. I thought I went
rather easy on them in my Trusted Dealers list where I
wrote:
"Yayla Tribal Rugs
I can no longer recommend Yayla or
anything Chris is involved with." http://www.SpongoBongo.com/resousa.htm
Recently I received an email from a rug
collector who I shall call R. John who accused me of
"Character Assassination". To this point I
thought I went very easy on people particularly on Chris
Walter and Yayla. Frankly I think exploiting children for
money is a really slimy thing to do. So to be fair to R.
John and to Chris Walter at Yayla I decided to call Chris
and ask him about it.
After repeated call I kept missing Chris
Walter so today (3:45 PM 10/23/06) I got lucky and got
Harry Glassie on the phone. Harry a longtime associate of
Chris Walter is also the son of Henry
Glassie.
(Henry
Glassie received his Ph.D. in folklore from the
University of Pennsylvania. After teaching in IU's
renowned Folklore Institute, he returned to Penn to
be chair of its Department of Folklore and Folklife.
In 1988, he came home to IU as College Professor of
Folklore. He serves, too, as Co-Director of Turkish
Studies, has adjunct appointments in Central Eurasian
Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and
American Studies, and is a member of the Advisory
Council of India Studies.)
So I asked Harry what is the truth about
Chris Walter and his involvement in the commercial
exploitation of children. Harry was amazingly candid,
first of all he made it clear that this is not
"Forced Labor" the children only weave with the
consent of their parents. He also made it clear that they
only use Afghan Turkmen children and that there is no
child labor in the Yayla Tibetan production. Harry also
told me that the child labor rugs are "not
interesting or high quality". The question I should
have asked is if the rugs are inferior then why does
Chris dirty his hands with them.
I found this description of Chris Walter:
"Chris Walter is the founder and
president of Yayla Tribal Rugs, Inc., a carpet
producer and distributor, and the founder of Barakat,
Inc., a nonprofit corporation that benefits weaving
communities and environmental protection in Asia. He
is the founder and coordinator of projects for the
protection of Ersari Turkmen refugees from Northern
Afghanistan and Tibetan refugees living in Nepal and
India."
Let me know what you think. Do we close
our eyes to the commercial exploitation of children You
can reach me at JBOC@SpongoBongo.com
or Chris Walter at YAYLA TRIBAL RUGS 283 Broadway
Cambridge MA 02139 USA Tel: (617) 576-3249 Yayla@Yayla.com. If you
think I am wrong feel free to let me know the reasons
why. If you object to this let Chris know.
If there are any errors in this please
let me know right away but on the basis of Harry
Glassie's say so I feel that I am on solid ground. If you
want more information on the commercial exploitation of
children in the rug trade visit Rugmark
Foundation. You can see the
Cambridge version of the Texas two Step at RugNotes:
Star Tribune: Yayla Tribal Rugs, a Massachusetts-based
company Supports Some Child Labor
By the way in most rug producing
countries child labor is a thing of the past. You can buy
most rugs including Persian and Turkish without worry.
India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are the only places with
a serious child labor problem.
Best wishes,
Barry O'Connell
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