June 9, Democratic Voice of Burma Woodworkers arrested on march to Mandalay Twelve people were arrested on Saturday for their involvement in a workers’ rights demonstration in Mandalay. Among those arrested were ten protest leaders and two negotiators. Several hundred employees of the Chinese-owned Lucky Treasure woodcutting factory in Sinkkaing Township, accompanied by hundreds of supporters, were intercepted by about 500 police officers as they tried to march to Mandalay, according to the Federation of Trade Unions of Burma (FTUB). The demonstration was the latest of four strikes at the factory, beginning in June 2012. Aung Linn, chairman of the FTUB, said that workers at the factory have had ongoing disagreements with management over problematic contracts. “There were about four strikes,” he said. “The first one lasted half a day on 17 June, 2012, when the workers were asking to have a holiday on Sundays. The second time, Khine Min, a labour union leader, was arrested for two weeks.” Aung Lin explained that the situation escalated in March 2014 when the factory owners broke an agreement with employees. This time, he said, workers were unhappy with contract renewals proposed by management. The new contracts would require all employees to undergo a three-month probationary period at the start of the term, regardless of how long they have worked there. The new agreement also gives management the right to arbitrarily terminate employment, he said. Union leaders also said that as a result of the unrest, the Border Affairs Ministry deployed 28 administrators to pressure the workers to quit their jobs. “Authorities pressured the workers,” said Thet Htun Aung of FTUB. “They arrested our leaders they threatened us, they approached workers’ families and told them to accept compensation and leave their jobs or the military would dismantle their protest site”. Thet Htun Aung added that 14 workers accepted money from the authorities and abandoned their jobs. The detained activists each face three charges, including violation of Article 505(b) of Burma’s penal code. The article has often been used to punish activists under the sweeping premise of intent to cause fear or alarm among civilians. Trade unions are still finding their footing in Burma. Enactment of the Labour Organisation Law in October 2011 gave citizens the right to form unions of more than 30 members for the first time in decades. The law repealed the draconian Trade Unions Act of 1962, which wholly outlawed unionisation. Link: http://www.dvb.no/news/woodworkers-arrested-on-march-to-mandalay/41352
World Cup Host Qatar Ranked Among Worst Places to Work by Unions
By Robert Tuttle May 22, 2014 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Qatar, which pledged to improve labor safety standards as 2022 World Cup construction projects get under way, was ranked among the worst violators of workers rights in a report by the International Trade Union Confederation. The Persian Gulf country was given the lowest score of five, which places it among “the worst countries in the world to work in,” the ITUC, a group representing trade unions around the world, said in its 2014 Global Rights Index. Authorities said last week that Qatar will amend labor laws after the death of dozens of immigrant workers on construction projects drew a storm of criticism from human rights and labor groups. Qatar, the world’s richest country per capita, is expected to rely mostly on migrant labor from countries such as Nepal and India to build $200 billion of roads, stadiums, a subway system and other projects before it hosts the most-watched sporting event. Story: The 2022 FIFA World Cup Could Be Deadly for Qatar's Migrant Workers In a category five country, “while the legislation may spell out certain rights, workers have effectively no access to these rights and are therefore exposed to autocratic regimes and unfair labor practices,” the ITUC said. U.K. newspaper The Guardian reported in September that 44 Nepalese workers had died in Qatar between June 4 and Aug. 8 amid “appalling labor abuses.” The Nepali Embassy later said 53 Nepalis had died. Amnesty International said in a November report that workers in Qatar often weren’t paid wages, were subject to “harsh and dangerous” working conditions and “shocking standards of accommodation.” The group documented the cases of dozens of workers who were prevented from leaving the country for many months by their employers. Story: Scenes From the Fast-Food Worker Protests Spreading Overseas The ITUC also gave a score of five to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain received a score of 4, a country with “systematic violations.” It ranked countries including Uruguay, South Africa and France among the best for worker protections. To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Tuttle in Doha at rtuttle@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net Amy Teibel, Dana El Baltaji
Labour Violations Under Tight Wraps in Thailand
Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - 19:33Inter Press Service MAHACHAI, Thailand, Jun 11 (IPS) - Next time you visit Walmart and throw that packet of frozen shrimp in your shopping cart, pause a moment. The shrimp would most likely have travelled from Thailand, the world’s top exporter of seafood since 2004, where reports of abuse of migrant workers have recently cast an unflattering shadow over the industry. A Jun. 6 briefing report by the Washington-based International Labour Rights Forum highlighted child and worker rights violations at Narong Seafood, one of Thailand’s leading seafood factories and one of Walmart’s top suppliers. Narong Seafood’s principal shrimp processing facility is located in Samut Sakhon or modern Mahachai, a central Thai province that is home to over 6,000 seafood factories. This fishing and factory town at the mouth of the Tha Chin Klong River, which empties into the Gulf of Thailand, also hosts a huge percentage of the estimated 2.5 million migrant workers who underpin much of Thailand’s burgeoning economy. Burmese comprise 82 percent of these migrants, while the rest come mostly from Laos (8.4 percent) and Cambodia (9.5 percent). U Aung Kyaw was among those fleeing military rule, a crumbling economy and a lack of job opportunities in Myanmar (formally Burma). He came to Thailand looking for work in 1998 and soon found himself in Mahachai, working at a seafood factory. It was here that he first experienced labour abuse and vowed not only to educate himself about his rights but also to advocate improved conditions for his fellow workers. One of the few workers willing to speak to the press, U Aung Kyaw heads the Burmese-led Migrant Worker Rights Network (MWRN). He told IPS that smaller processing factories “force workers to work overtime for less pay. The legal minimum wage is 300 baht (roughly 10 dollars) per day and overtime is 56 baht (about two dollars) per hour, but they usually pay 50-100 baht (about 1.5 to three dollars) overall, and no overtime.” “Most workers are confined to the compound in these factories. Often, they are locked up and their documents confiscated to prevent them from escaping.” This is especially true in smaller factories, which handle the shrimp peeling for larger enterprises, where “shifts start at four a.m. and finish late at night,” according to U Aung Kyaw. Thailand's seafood industry employs more than 650,000 people. Its exports totalled 7.3 billion dollars in 2011, with the United States, Japan and Europe importing nearly 70 percent of the country’s seafood. Allegations of worker abuse are nothing new to the sector. One indictment came as recently as May 29 this year, when a report by the London-based Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) entitled ‘Sold to the Sea’ documented the case of 15 Burmese migrant workers who claimed that they were subjected to forced detention, bonded labour and physical abuse while being employed on Thai fishing ships. Another report by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in 2011 titled ‘Trafficking of Fishermen in Thailand’ documented cases of migrant fishermen who were forced to work for years without pay. Meanwhile, labour rights activists who attempt to expose the dark side of this lucrative industry risk severe reprisals from a strong business community anxious to maintain positive international trade relations, and present an untarnished view of the sector to the outside world. Especially in small factories, where individual owners can easily police the workforce, attempts to organise workers, or expose violations, have been met with police crackdowns or attacks by gangs. “We were beaten up and experienced a lot of physical harassment,” said U Aung Kyaw, who began collecting data and reporting abuses to the Labour Rights Promotion Network in Mahachai several years ago, before finally launching MWRN in 2009. Getting workers to speak out is tough because many are undocumented and fear reprisals. Activists recently pilloried the National Verification Programme for charging “extortionist” prices for work permits, pushing many migrant into a kind of bonded servitude. Twenty-seven-year-old Win Sein, hailing from the Tanintharyi Division in southeast Myanmar, was forced to pay his broker 223 dollars when he arrived here seven years ago. To pay off the massive bill, he landed a job at a tuna processing factory in Mahachai. "I'm currently working at Thai Union Frozen Foods in Mahachai,” Win Sein told IPS. Here, a full range of discriminatory practices are on display, including Thai workers receiving two weeks of paid vacation while their Burmese counterparts get no official leave. The fisheries sector is not the only one to have come under fire. A 2012 report by the Finnish research NGO Finnwatch revealed how basic human rights were being grossly violated at the pineapple processing company Natural Fruit, which supplies pineapple concentrate to Refresco, the bottle manufacturer that controls an estimated 20 percent of the European private label soft drink and fruit juice market. Finnwatch reserved a large part of its indictment for Refresco, saying it too is partly responsible for the exploitation of migrant workers. Finnwatch research coordinator Henri Purje said that companies like Refresco, which raked in 1.22 billion euros in revenues in 2010, compromised labour rights in an effort to maintain competitive prices. He told IPS that since labour costs only comprise a tiny percentage of the price of the end product, paying decent wages and abiding by the International Labour Organisation (ILO)'s guidelines will hardly impact the company’s bottom line. The problem, as Purje sees it, “is that the international chains that buy from Thai producers put fairly strict conditions on their suppliers, making it difficult for suppliers to pay minimum wage.” For the moment, Refresco has reportedly stopped sourcing from Natural Fruit, and the company, owned and operated by the brother of Thailand’s Democratic Party Secretary-General Chalermchai Sri-On, has filed a 10-million-dollar lawsuit against the co-author of the Finnwatch report, British migrant specialist Andy Hall, for “criminal defamation.” For the last decade, Hall has exposed systematic abuses of migrant workers in Thailand and has worked closely with foreign consumers and diplomatic missions to develop a strategy of corporate social responsibility that might make life easier for migrant workers. He told IPS he has also been working closely with the Myanmar government, on whose shoulders the responsibility of protecting migrant workers falls. Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent visit and meeting with migrant workers in Mahachai has brought renewed hope that things will change.
(၉၉)ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ILOညီလာခံ စံနႈန္းစံထားေကာ္မတီ၊ အထူးႀကားနာခ်က္မွ ခ်မွတ္ေသာဆုံျဖတ္ခ်က္အေပၚ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံအလုပ္သမားသမဂၢမ်ားအဖဲြ ့ခ်ဳပ္၏ ထုတ္ျပန္ေႀကာျငာခ်က္
This Halloween, help fight one of the SCARIEST worker rights abuses:
This Halloween, help fight one of the SCARIEST worker rights abuses:
forced child labor!
Keep reading for updates and ways to take action on these campaigns:
Chocolate: Child labor in West Africa's cocoa farms
Cotton : Forced child labor in Uzbekistan's cotton fields
Dole : Invest in worker rights, not exploitation!
Chocolate
This Saturday, thousands of young people in 47 states in the US and all across Canada will participate in the third annual "Reverse Trick-or-Treating" action. They will be giving Fair Trade chocolate back to the houses where they go trick-or-treating on Halloween along with information about labor rights abuses in the cocoa industry and the benefits of Fair Trade. It may be too late to order your action kit, but there are still two ways that you can tell the major chocolate companies that you are sick of their tricks!
Download this flyer and distribute it in your neighborhood to spread the word;
Send an e-mail to Hershey, Mars and Nestle to STOP using child labor in their cocoa! (and tell a friend to join you!)
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Cotton
Onto another frightening example of forced child labor: the cotton industry in Uzbekistan. Right now during the current harvest season, the government of Uzbekistan has continued it's policy of removing millions of children from schools all across the country in order to pick cotton -- which then ends up in the clothing we buy here in the US. On October 14th, ILRF joined with a number of union, human rights and faith-based organizations in a rally in front of the Embassy of Uzbekistan in Washington, DC to tell the government to STOP using forced child labor in the cotton industry. Check out this great video from the rally here and photographs from the rally here. Ask your member of Congress to take action here!
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Dole
One of the scariest global corporations in terms of conditions for workers is the Dole Food Company. Last week, Dole went public on the stock market and over 40 investors, unions, organizations and faith-based groups sent a letter to Dole raising concerns about their labor rights violations. You can help invest in workers by supporting ILRF instead of Dole! Make a donation for the price of a share in Dole by clicking here!
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BURMA: ILO Turns Spotlight on Officials to End Forced Labour
Inter Press Service News Agency
BURMA: ILO Turns Spotlight on Officials to End Forced Labour
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Sep 3 (IPS) - The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is turning its attention to a western corner of military-ruled Burma to end the scourge of forced labour, which remains rampant in most parts of the South-east Asian nation.
On Sunday, the ILO will be hosting a rare meeting of judges, military officers, police officers and members of the local labour department as part of its effort to raise awareness aimed at ending a form of human rights abuse that, at times, has included victims as young as 11.
"We hope to make presentations on international humanitarian law and raise issues about forced labour, child soldiers and harassment," says Steve Marshall, the ILO’s representative in Burma, also known as Myanmar. "This is a positive step."
There are a lot of "policy conflicts" on this issue, Marshall told a small group of journalists during a recent visit to Bangkok. "Even though we are being permitted to have this event, the military see themselves as above the law."
The weekend meeting in Sittwe, a port city in Burma’s Arakan state, close to the Bangladesh border, will be the fifth of its kind the Geneva-based labour organisation has held in Burma since July 2007.
The ILO’s efforts to make such inroads in a country ruled by a notoriously stubborn and defiant regime – particularly in placing strict limits on international agencies challenging its grip on power – have set this labour rights body apart from other United Nations agencies and international humanitarian organisations operating in Burma.
"The ILO is the only international organisation that has maintained principled pressure and engagement of the Burmese regime," says David Scott Mathieson, Burma consultant for Human Rights Watch, the New York-based global rights lobby. "It has shown how international organisations should deal with the Burmese government – that they will not keep quiet about problems, yet keep engaging and trying to help improve the situation."
At the same time, though, the concessions the military regime is offering to the ILO is not a sign of a growing shift in policy aimed at ending the forced labour problem, Mathieson tells IPS. "It is one of grudging respect. If the Burmese government can get away with not dealing with the ILO, it would do so."
The pressure on the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the military regime is formally known, stems from its running battles with the ILO. In 2006, following reports that Burma was failing in its obligations to the ILO to end forced labour, more pressure was turned on the SPDC.
The ILO’s members threatened to haul the country before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague for its record of abusive labour practices. Burma would have been the first country to face such humiliation had no changes been made on the ground.
One of the demands placed by the ILO was for Burma to have in place a "credible mechanism for dealing with complaints of forced labour with all necessary guarantees for the protection of complaints."
Yet, while the ILO office in Burma has developed a network to gather information on incidents of forced labour, the mechanism for victims of the abuse or their families to lodge complaints is far from perfect. "That people are getting arrested when complaining is still a concern," admits ILO’s Marshall. "Currently there are two people in jail for making complaints to the ILO. They have been charged under the Official Secrets Act." This law considers it an offence for any person to possess information deemed classified by the state.
Also coming in the way of the ILO’s forced labour-reporting mechanism is the junta preventing reader-friendly material about these human rights violations being printed in local languages and distributed across the country. Only the formal document, peppered with legal language, has been approved for distribution.
The junta’s resolve to stop the forced labour network being dismantled stems from how much the military culture depends on such abuse to achieve its military and development ends. The more pervasive forms of forced labour, some in almost slave-like conditions, include portering for the military, cleaning army camps, building military structures and even walking ahead of troops in areas infested with landmines.
"Forced labour and Burma is like the head and tail of a coin," states the Federation of Trade Unions – Burma, a network of Burmese labour rights activists operating in exile, including Thailand and the United States. "Millions of people of Burma have been used for state projects of railroad building, strategic road construction, army barrack building, army-run businesses and (for the) agro-economy. "
The Arakan state, where the ILO is hosting Sunday’s meeting, is notorious. The victims are the state’s Rohingyas, an ethnic Muslim minority in predominantly Buddhist Burma. They have been a victim of gross rights violations, including restrictions to get married unless the state gives approval. Familes are forced to work four days a week and have to plant crops that the military orders.
Forced labour the Rohingyas are subject to during the ongoing monsoon season has been documented in the paddy fields, planting physic nut trees and rubber saplings, for road repair, states a recent report by The Arakan Project, which monitors rights violations of the Rohingyas.
In addition, due to border tensions between Burma and Bangladesh, "the Burmese regime suddenly brought shiploads of building material in order to erect a border fence along the Bangladesh-Burma border," adds the Project report, ‘Large Increase in Forced Labour along the Bangladesh-Burma Border: Forced Labour Practices in North Arakan’. "By April large numbers of villagers were then recruited to raise an embankment."
"This year forced labour in North Arakan has significantly increased mainly due to the construction of the border fence along the Bangladesh-Burma border and the sudden increase of army battalions along the border," says Chris Lewa, author of the report and coordinator of the Project.
"Forced labour occurs throughout the year and usually follows a seasonal pattern. In the dry season, villagers are mostly recruited for construction work in military camps and repairing roads," she says.
Yet she doubts the ILO’s presence in the Arakan state will reduce the suffering endured by the persecuted Rohingya minority. "Most Rohingyas would not be aware of the ILO’s complaint mechanism, but even if they were and would be ready to take the risk of lodging a complaint, they would be unable to do so due to the restriction of movement imposed on them," Lewa reveals in an interview. "They need to obtain permission even to travel to a neighbouring village."
Shut out in Burma
Shut out in Burma
(Jul 13, 2009)
True to form, Burma's military dictator, General Than Shwe, showed only disdain when UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited that tortured land (also known as Myanmar) 10 days ago. Than Shwe and the other four generals in the ruling junta denied Ban's requests for a democratic evolution.
To his credit, Ban spoke out afterward, asking, "How much longer can Burma afford to wait for national reconciliation, democratic transition and full respect for human rights?"
Now that he has experienced the junta leader's inflexibility firsthand, Ban must confront the question: What can the world body do to help liberate the people of Burma?
The narco-trafficking regime there has forced people into labour, used systematic rape as a weapon of war, and conducted brutal army offences that uprooted hundreds of thousands of people from minority ethnic groups.
Ban had the right idea. Upon arriving in Burma, he planned to ask for the release of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and 2,100 other political prisoners.
He would call for reconciliation with Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, landslide winners of Burma's last free election in 1990, a mandate the junta never honoured. Ban also wanted to foster humanitarian aid and economic development.
But after Than Shwe refused to cede to any of these requests, Ban got the message.
"Neither peace nor development can thrive without democracy and respect for human rights," he told diplomats and aid agencies.
Ban is mistaken, however, if he thinks that proper monitoring will legitimize an election scheduled for 2010 -- an exercise rigged to perpetuate military rule with a civilian patina. Burmese democratic activist Win Tin has observed that the true barrier to democracy in Burma is not the mechanics of next year's balloting but the junta's "unjust constitution." That document bars Suu Kyi from participating, reserves 25 per cent of seats in parliament for the military, and practically guarantees the generals and their cronies an overwhelming majority
If Ban really wants to help the people of Burma, he should side with the 55 members of the U.S. Congress who recently signed a letter to President Barack Obama urging him "to take the lead in establishing a United Nations Security Council Commission of Inquiry into the Burmese military regime's crimes against humanity and war crimes against its civilian population."
Such commissions were instituted for Rwanda and Darfur. Nothing less is needed if the UN, that would-be parliament of nations, is to fulfil its commitment to protect the peoples of the world from criminal rulers.
http://www.thespec.com/Opinions/article/598938
People made to construct road without wages by USDA
http://www.abitsu.org/?p=4984
June 11, 2009
Khonumthung News: Chin people are being forced to construct a road in Kanpelet Township by the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) in Kanpelet Town, Southern Chin State, in western Burma.
“We have started work from April. A link road between Hmuchinding and Cin dwe villages, a stretch of 30 miles, will allow motor cars to travel on the road. The construction work is being led by USDA with 20 neighboring villages. We have been divided into five groups and told to construct a specific number of meters of the road. We have almost finished 16 miles,” a local said.
The construction of the link road between Hmuchinding and Cindwe village has been sponsored by “I Love Myanmar” which is a non government organization (NGO). However, the USDA does not pay daily wages to the villagers who are involved in the project.
Although the USDA has spent all the sponsored funds for buying digging equipment, people’s labour is more useful for the work. “Especially they’re using people’s energy. The machines can’t handle crushing of big stones,” he added.
On the other hand, one of the USDA leaders told workers “The construction of the road is none of our business but we are only doing it to help transportation between the two villages. It will be beneficial for students who go to school in Hmuchinding village.”
There are about 70 houses with approximately 500 people in Hmuchinding village. The village has a Middle School where most students from neighbouring villages attend. “I Love Myanmar” will sponsor a new High School building next year.
Similarly, people are being forced to build a road between Mukwe Inu village and Mindat town by the USDA.
Meanwhile, the workers are anxious about their livelihood as they are being forced into road construction by the USDA without getting paid. They are worried about their family. Yet, they want to complete the project as it would mean better transportation between the two villages and will help their children’s education.
Topics: Daily News, Human Rights | Comments Off
* U.N. agency tells Myanmar to end forced labour
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20090606/tap-myanmar-labour-c3bb44c.html
By Jonathan Lynn
GENEVA, June 6 - The U.N. International Labour Organisation told Myanmar on Saturday to end forced labour, saying the action it had taken so far was "totally inadequate".
But the ILO's committee on labour standards stopped short of referring Myanmar to the International Court of Justice, the top U.N. tribunal, as worker representatives demanded.
The ILO has been at odds with the former Burma for more than a decade over what it says is a widespread practice of forcing villagers to work on infrastructure projects or as porters for the army.
The committee said Myanmar's military government had taken some steps to tackle underage recruitment into the military, and to publicise a temporary complaints mechanism, which was extended for one year.
"The Committee was however of the view that these steps are totally inadequate," it said in the conclusions of its meeting.
The committee told the government it must amend both existing legislation and the new constitution to ban forced labour, publicise the ban, punish those who impose it, and stop harassing people who complain about it or those who help them.
Myanmar's ambassador in Geneva, Wunna Maung Lwin, told the committee: "Myanmar has shown its political will, and she has been and will be cooperating with the ILO in a constructive manner with a view to eradicating the practice of forced labour in the country."
But employers' and workers' representatives and Western governments at the ILO dismissed this.
FEW COMPLAINTS
A report by the ILO's liaison officer in Myanmar, Steve Marshall, said only 152 complaints of forced labour had been received under the mechanism agreed in 2007. [ID:nL6136921]
"The government continues to play the diplomatic game of doing just enough to create an appearance of cooperation ... No one in this room is fooled by that," said Edward Potter, who speaks for the employers' group on the committee.
Several workers' representatives called for disinvestment from Myanmar, which is rich in oil, gas, timber and gems, and was once a major rice producer.
But Myanmar drew support from China, which values Myanmar as a source of raw materials and route to the Indian Ocean, and from India, which has recently toned down criticism of its neighbour for fear of allowing Chinese influence to grow.
"We are glad to notice that ... the two sides have been conducting close cooperation, taking substantive actions with substantive achievements made," the Chinese representative said.
India also said Myanmar and the ILO had made tangible progress in tackling forced labour.
Myanmar also got backing from fellow members of the Southeast Asian grouping ASEAN.
Singapore urged it to redouble efforts to end forced labour, but criticised speakers who raised the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader currently on trial after years of house arrest, or referred to Myanmar as Burma.
ILO alarmed by forced labour clause in Myanmar constitution
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gOySz4kn56izGcihQTyoGE4bglNQ
GENEVA (AFP) — International labour experts on Saturday called on the Myanmar government to amend a provision in the country's new constitution that could be interpreted as justifying forced labour.
A special session at the International Labour Organisation on the forced labour situation in Myanmar concluded that the steps taken by the ruling junta towards eradicating forced labour were "totally inadequate."
In a report presented at the meeting, the experts pointed to a provision in the new constitution referring to "duties assigned thereupon by the State in accord with the law in the interests of the people."
The experts expressed deep concern about a provision in the text of the Constitution that "may be interpreted in such a way as to allow a generalised exaction of forced labour from the population."
They called on the government to amend the new constitution, which is meant to take effect in 2010, to bring it into conformity with labour rules.
Myanmar's representative however said the government "cannot accept criticism on our constitution process", which he said had been adopted by over 90 percent of voters.
ILO experts said that exploitation remained rampant in the Asian country, adding "there is no genuine and sustained political will to end forced labour."
They also raised "serious concern on the continued human rights violations in Myanmar and the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi" and other political prisoners.
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi faces up to five years in jail on charges of having breached the conditions of her house arrest after an incident in which US national John Yettaw swam to her lakeside home in May.
The authorities in Myanmar accused Suu Kyi of covering up the American's presence and rebuked her for offering him food and shelter, allegations that have sparked international outrage.
Junta’s pipeline root of rights violation: Report
http://www.mizzima.com/news/inside-burma/2099-juntas-pipeline-root-of-rights-violation-report.html
by Salai Pi Pi
Friday, 08 May 2009 20:39
New Delhi - The Burmese military regime’s Kanbawk-Myaing Kalay gas pipeline has been a source of widespread human rights violation in southern Burma, a new report said.
The 100-page report titled ‘Laid waste: Human rights along Kanbawk to Myaing Kalay gas pipeline’ released on Wednesday said, the junta, on the pretext of guarding the gas pipeline has forcibly relocated local villagers, raped ethnic women, used forced labour, and in many cases killed with impunity.
Burma’s military government began constructing a gas pipeline from Kanbawk in Tenasserim division to Myaing Kalay in Karen state, to transport gas from the Yadana gas field in the Andaman Sea to be used in cement factories and for electricity projects in Myaing Kalay in November 2000.
Nai Kasauh Director of the Mon Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM), the group that compiled the report said, at least 15,000 acres of land was confiscated by the Burmese Army to make way for the pipeline and to support 30 army battalions deployed in the area to protect the pipeline.
“They [Burmese regime] moved several villages and confiscated over 2,400 acres of land such as paddy fields and rubber farms which fell on the route of the gas pipeline,” said Nai Kasauh Mon.
“Over 11,000 acres of land were confiscated and used to plant rubber and Durian [fruit] for ration for the army battalions,” he added.
According to HURFOM, the junta has drastically expanded the presence of the army along the gas pipeline route since 2000. Along with the expansion, the Burmese Army began widespread rights abuses ranging from rape of women, forced labour, extra-judicial killings, extortion and demanded food from local villagers.
Nai Kasauh Mon said the villagers near the gas pipeline are subjected to forced labour in vulnerable situations, where the Kanbawk-Myaing Kalay pipeline construction had several times been attacked by ethnic rebel groups.
The northern Tenisserim division in Mon and Karen state, where the pipeline passes through, is home to a number of ethnic armed rebel groups including the Karen National Union (KNU), and the New Mon State Party (NMSP).
“Sometime it [the gas pipeline] exploded on its own. Sometimes rebels attacked it. And such incidents caused damages to the villages and rubber farms close to the pipeline, as it caused fires several times,” Nai Kasauh Mon said.
“As a result, local villagers have to work for the pipeline without being paid and are used for guarding the pipeline and even carrying army equipments for soldiers on duty,” he added.
He said, the human rights violation committed by the soldiers guarding the pipeline have largely been ignored by the junta’s army officers.
Similar atrocities have been reported when the junta engaged in construction of the Yadana and Yetagun pipelines in early 1990s, which was used for transporting gas to neighbouring Thailand.
“This time, since the pipeline is solely constructed by the junta and no foreign companies are involved, the campaign against human rights violation is too little and it is difficult for the victims to raise their voices,” Nai Kasauh Mon said.
“But the extent of violations are no less,” he added.
OSI Forum: Forced Labor in Burma(CLICK HERE)
Location: OSI-New York
Event Date(s): May 4, 2009
Speakers: Richard Horsey, Stephen Hubbell
Multimedia: AUDIO
Villagers afraid to report forced labour to ILO
March 31st, 2009
DVB : The International Labour Organisation has stated that complainants of forced labour in Burma are at greater risk of imprisonment if they have affiliations with political opposition groups. The comment came after reports surfaced that villagers in Irrawaddy division had been forced to work on the reconstruction of a road, and were afraid to make a complaint to the ILO for fear of imprisonment.
“We heard about two men from central Burma who were recently thrown into prison for reporting a case to the ILO,” said one of the villagers.
Labour activist Zaw Htay was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in January after helping farmers in Magwe divison file a report to the ILO on land seizures.
His lawyer Pho Phyu, was subsequently sentenced earlier this month to four years imprisonment after defending him at the trial.
“So we are scared we might end up the same way if we complain about what happened in our villages,” the villager added.
Steve Marshall, ILO liaison officer in Rangoon, said that, although the vast majority of complainants received no subsequent action from the government, there were some that had.
“The ILO is of the belief that in those cases it is because they are firstly politically active, but are secondly active within the ILO’s supplementary framework as well,” he said.
The supplementary framework is the mechanism which deals with complaints to the ILO in Burma. It stipulates that the government must not harass or arrest people who report forced labour to the ILO or collect information on such practices.
“If someone who has got affiliations and is active in other political activity takes action then the risk of them having some retaliation taken against them increases,” he added.
The ILO reported last month that there has been no reduction in forced labour over the past year, despite ongoing attempts to tackle the problem.
Army Uses Dynet People for Forced Labor
http://democracyforburma.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/army-uses-dynet-people-for-forced-labor/
2009 March 23
tags: Arakan, Burma, Human Rights, Junta, world focus on Burmaby peacerunning3/23/2009
Buthidaung: Dynet tribal people in northern Arakan have been forced by the Burmese army to work at many government construction sites and on other projects without any pay, said a tribal leader.
“we have to send at least three or four people, along with our own food, from each village in a week to army headquarters to labor at the army compound,” he said.
Most of the villagers have been working in the army compounds on tasks such as carrying water from the pond to the base, clearing out brush and grass, transporting letters from one battalion to another, and cooking for the soldiers.
“The army authorities have used forced labor at LIB 353 and 534 based in Buthidaung on a rotating system where the villagers work one group at a time. One group is able to return home when another group arrives at the headquarters. If any group does not arrive, the previous group has to continue working at the headquarters until another group shows up,” the leader said.
Dynet villagers from Long Chaung, Tet Ma Chaung, Kyauk Pru Daung, Pyin Kaung, and Nga Kyin Dauk villages are being forced to work on a daily basis. The Dynet people are an ethnic group in the Arakanese community that lives in the border area of Burma near Bangladesh. Most of the community members are uneducated.
Since the people are unable to complain about the use of forced labor by the army to the Rangoon ILO office, the army has taken advantage of them and used them for labor whenever they need work done, the leader added.
According to local source, forced labor is continuing in Arakan State but is primarily now occurring in remote areas near Bangladesh where foreigners are unable to visit
Narinjara News
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Forced child labour: invisible to the world
http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/3159/2009/02/13-142651-1.htm
13 Mar 2009 14:26:00 GMT
Written by: Andrew Stroehlein
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.
It has to be the largest regular state-driven act of child exploitation anywhere in the world. The annual cotton harvest in Uzbekistan depends on the forced labour of some 2.7 million children, who are all removed from school for six to eight weeks to work in the fields and enrich the elites of the country's authoritarian regime.
A new study, "Invisible to the World: The Dynamics of Forced Child Labour in the Cotton Sector of Uzbekistan", highlights the scale and severity of this yearly horror. I'd seen some of the data from this report before it was published, but the full details of the assessment, carried out by Uzbek researchers who put themselves at great risk to gather the evidence, are still shocking.
Published by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, the report looks at six school districts, where between 86 and 100 per cent of the pupils were subject to compulsory recruitment for 51 to 63 days, without weekend breaks and under detrimental sanitary, health and nutritional conditions. The children miss out on two months of school and are exposed, according to the paper, "to conditions of work that merit close examination in light of the criteria set by the International Labour Organization Conventions 138 and 182", referring to the international treaties concerning the Minimum Age for Admission to Employment (Convention 138, 1973) and The Worst Forms of Child Labour (Convention 182, 1999).
Understand, please, this is most certainly not the poverty-driven child labour one sadly sees in other developing countries. As the report says:
The practice of child labour in Uzbekistan represents a distinctive case. Global patterns suggest that it is generally families and/or employers who tend to be the major initiators and beneficiaries of children's work. Uzbekistan represents a rare instance of state-sanctioned mass mobilization of children's labour. The principal beneficiaries are not households or primary producers but state-controlled trading companies higher up the value chain. Their exclusive control over cotton export revenues and their ability to appropriate the profits generated by the disparity between domestic and international market prices gives them a stake in the maintenance of the current procurement and labour control regime.
The new SOAS study looks at data from the 2007 harvest, but researchers are now busy analysing data from 2008. While those newer figures are not yet available publicly, they do already make clear that the situation did not change at all in the intervening year, despite much publicised government promises to end the practice of forced child labour.
When I was in Tashkent in October, regime officials told me point blank that no children were working in the cotton fields any more. From the photos I've seen, including those in this new study which were taken in 2008, the government's claims are clearly false.
Thankfully, this issue is not "invisible" to everyone. The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) has been working on it for years, campaigning for an EU regulation on forced child labour and for cotton products to show the country of origin of the cotton on the label. Many major clothing producers and retailers in Europe and the US have pledged to stop using Uzbek cotton in their products.
Reuters AlertNet is not responsible for the content of external websites.
Three Men Die in Forced Labor Incidents
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=15288
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By MIN LWIN Thursday, March 12, 2009
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Three villagers died in two cases of forced labor in Kyauktada and Daik-U townships in Pegu Division in Burma, according to a social and labor rights group, Guiding Star.
The deaths occurred when village authorities forced villagers to excavate sand and gravel for schools and to construct government buildings, said the labor group, which monitors and documents human rights abuses in Burma.
“Local village authorities are still using forced labor in villages in Pegu Division,” Aye Myint, a Guiding Star activist, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday.
Saw Phar Luu, 54 years old, of Kyauk Talone village in Daik-U Township was forced to work in a rock quarry in the Yoma Mountain range in Pegua Division.
“Saw Phar Luu was killed when rocks fell on him on January 29,” Aye Myint said.
In a separate incident, two brothers, Min Oo and Myint Aung of Gway Chogone village in Kyauktada Township in Pegu Division, died on February 1 when sand buried them in Phayargyi, one mile from Gway Chongone village.
The village authorities and school construction committee asked Min Oo, 30, and Myint Aung, 22, to work on a government school in Gway Chogone village and to take charge of collecting sand for the project.
“They were killed while collecting the sand at a forced labor site. The sand pit collapsed and both of them died,” said Aye Myint.
Aye Myint said the local village authorities offered no compensation to family members.
Aye Myint complained about what he termed the response of the International Labor Organization (ILO) office in Rangoon, when it was informed about the death of the two brothers.
"The ILO doesn’t want us to inform the exile media,” said Aye Myint.
Meanwhile, Phoe Phyu, a labor lawyer, has been arrested by local authorities in Magwe Township. Phoe Phyu was an advocate for farmers in Natmauk Township in Magwe Division who were arrested by local authorities. The farmers had complained to the ILO office in Rangoon that their land had been confiscated.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
BURMA -No reduction in forced labour, says ILO
http://english.dvb.no/news.php?id=2266
Feb 27, 2009 (DVB)–There has been no reduction in the use of forced labour in Burma despite work done by the International Labour Organisation to eradicate it, says ILO’s liasion officer in Rangoon, Steve Marshall.
The ILO’s Executive Director, Kari Tapiola, is currently in Burma to extend for another year the ILO’s cooperation agreement with the Burmese regime.
The agreement stipulates that the government must not harass or arrest people who report forced labour to the ILO or collect information on such practices.
“In terms of the forced labour issue, we continue to receive complaints,” said Marshall. “It is running at about the same level. It has not increased dramatically but it has not decreased either.”
Tapiola had said in March 2008 that forced labour was continuing in the country, and in some areas was getting worse.
“I do not think the government can deny the existence of forced labour, and we know many forced labour cases are taking place,” he said.
“Forced labour by civilian authorities might decline but the use of forced labor by the military is getting worse.”
On the cooperation agreement, however, Marshall said it is a mechanism that, in principal, works.
“The important thing is that citizens of Myanmar understand that they have got the right to complain and that if they do complain their complaint will be listened to and will be actioned,” he said.
He added, however, that there are still grey areas which the government is exploiting.
“There is, however, the situation where a person who was the facilitator for that complaint has been charged under the law on a different offence not related to the lodgment of the complaint,” he said.
“We are very concerned that there may in fact be an indirect link to his working on that complaint.”
On Saturday Tapiola will visit the ILO project in the delta. The project, according to Marshall, is designed as a best practice in employment to show that small-scale infrastructure work can be done without the use of forced labour.
Reporting by Htet Aung Kyaw
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