GRAPE VINE
SPDC,ILO and U Maung Maung
Source : David Arnott (Burma Peace Foundation)
...The most detailed and damning condemnation of the SLORC/SPDC's policy and practice of forced labour has come from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), particularly its Commission of Inquiry into forced labour in Burma, whose report was published in July 1998. U Maung Maung played a major part in the process that led up to the Commission of Inquiry. In "The New Light of Myanmar" and in statements to the ILO, the SLORC/SPDC has attempted to discredit him and the Federation of Trade Unions Burma (FTUB).
On 27 March 2000, the ILO Governing Body decided to refer the question of forced labour in Burma to the next ILO General Conference (30 May-15 June 2000). The SPDC put in a lot of work at the ILO to oppose this Decision and at the 2000 session of the Commission on Human Rights, its main lobby activity was an attempt (via Japan) to remove the paragraph on the ILO Decision from the Commission resolution on the Human Rights Situation in Myanmar (it succeeded in removing the description of, but not the reference to, the ILO Decision).
Going by the lobbying efforts it is making, particularly among Asian governments, the Burmese military seems to be very anxious about what will happen at the forthcoming ILO Conference. It would no doubt be very happy if U Maung Maung and the FTUB were discredited, and will no doubt make disparaging remarks about him in its statements to the ILO. However, the status of U Maung Maung and FTUB is unlikely to influence what will happen at the Conference, which will base its deliberations on the report of the ILO Commission of Inquiry (plus updates), very little of whose information came from the FTUB.
The Commission of Inquiry was composed of two former Chief Justices (of India and Barbados) and a prominent Australian lawyer, and supported by a team of experts from the ILO Secretariat. It invited written submissions and received about 10,000 pages from government and UN sources, and from international and local NGOs. It then held hearings in Geneva under a quasi-judicial procedure, at which it heard expert witnesses and direct victims of forced labour. Having been refused entry to Burma, the Commission then carried out a field mission to Bangladesh, India and Thailand, conducting 246 interviews. The activities of the Commission of Inquiry into forced labour in Burma are widely regarded as exemplary, both for its meticulous judicial procedure as well as its thoroughness and the sheer volume of its documentation.