International labor to maintain pressure on Burma
source : Asiatimes
By Brian Kenety
(Inter Press Service)
BRUSSELS - As the European Union (EU) began talks this week with Myanmar's military junta to push for democracy, the world's largest confederation of trade unions on Tuesday announced that it would seek a world-wide ban on investment and trade with Yangon.
In a 10-page briefing on Myanmar sent Tuesday to its 221 affiliated national union centers in 148 countries, the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) stipulates 30 different products in relation to which it found "vast evidence of forced labor over the last 10 years".
The products range from teak wood to coconut oil, rubber, cement, coffee, sugar cane and others. The ICFTU also says it had accumulated evidence of forced labor in 17 different areas of Myanmese industry. In addition to oil and gas production and textiles, where forced labor is already well documented, the ICFTU says it was now also researching in other directions, such as the telecommunications, automobile and pharmaceuticals industries.
The Myanmese military regime, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SDPC), has been under intense pressure from the international community to start a political dialogue as the first step towards restoring democracy in the country.
On November 16, 2000, the International Labor Organization's (ILO) governing body concluded that Myanmar was not taking adequate steps to abolish forced labor and urged member states and companies to "review their relations" with Yangon and cease any that might help the junta perpetuate the forced labor system.
In a move welcomed with cautious optimism by the international community, the military in December held talks with the National League for Democracy (NLD), which the junta has kept out of power despite the party's landslide win in the 1990 parliament elections in Myanmar. Last week, the military released from detention 84 members of the NLD. The EU delegation hopes to learn the details of these meetings, in which Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD party leader and Nobel Peace Price winner, took part. She has been under house arrest since September 22.
The ICFTU says it "extensively briefed" both the Belgian and Swedish diplomats taking part in the EU mission, before their departure, about the implications of the recent ILO resolution on Myanmar. France is also taking part in the mission, the first since July 1999.
The EU "troika" (the current Swedish presidency, future Belgian presidency, council and executive commission), was scheduled to meet with leaders of ethnic minorities and NGO representatives on Wednesday. The Commission is expected to announce its findings from the mission in Brussels next week.
ICFTU general-secretary Bill Jordan said on Tuesday, "We welcome both the talks and the prisoners' release, but they should never have been detained in the first place. You cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, consider as a genuine sign of progress the mass arrests, then the periodic release, of political prisoners ahead of important international visits, mostly followed by their re-arrest once foreign delegates have departed."
He stressed that the reason for the ILO resolution "is the systematic use of forced labor and evidence suggests the scourge is still very much there".
In an effort to keep up the pressure on Myanmar to adhere to international labor standards, the trade union confederation on Tuesday asked its affiliates to press their respective governments to impose a ban on investments in and trade with Myanmar, ahead of an important ILO meeting in March. The ICFTU says its affiliates will seek detailed data from their national governments on three areas: lists of enterprises maintaining trade relations with Myanmar (imports, exports and investments) in each country; total value of trade with Myanmar per country and identification of products imported from Myanmar in each country.
In its briefing for affiliates on Tuesday, the ICFTU makes clear it wants to see "genuine and credible evidence of progress on the forced labor issue" before even considering a shift on the issue of ILO sanctions.
"All available evidence points to the exact opposite," an ICFTU spokesperson said in Brussels, adding that the ICFTU would propose a comprehensive union strategy at an international trade union conference on "Solidarity with Myanmar", which will be held at the end of February in Tokyo.
Quoting several statements by senior governmental representatives from the region, the ICFTU said: "We have noticed some very small and cosmetic steps by the military but we are still very far from seeing any real progress. In fact we are convinced that fear of the impact of the ILO Resolution is the real drive behind the so-called secret SPDC talks with the opposition and the recent release, from jail, of about 100 senior opposition activists."
In its most recent report on Myanmar, released on December 7, the New York-based pressure group Human Rights Watch, said the SPDC last year failed to put a stop to its use of forced labor for infrastructure development, the construction of Buddhist structures, maintenance of military camps, and portering for army patrols. Throughout 2000, the SPDC continued to deny its citizens freedom of expression, association, assembly, and movement, said the report. The military intimidated members of the NLD into resigning from the party and encouraged crowds to denounce NLD members elected to parliament in the May 1990 election but not permitted to take their seats.
HRW says that tens of thousands of villagers in the conflict areas of central Shan state, Karenni state, Karen state, Mon state, and eastern Tenasserim division remain in forced relocation sites and faced curfews, looting, and restrictions on movement at the hands of the Myanmese army. "In the west, the SPDC continued to deprive ethnic minority Muslim Rohingya of full citizenship rights. The Rohingya were subject to restrictions on their freedom of movement, arbitrary taxation, and extortion by local officials. Forced labor was also common," said HRW.
The London-based human rights group Amnesty International said in a December 12 report, "Torture has become an institution in Myanmar, used throughout the country on a regular basis. Police and the army continue to use torture to extract information, punish, humiliate and control the population." Amnesty said that hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of criminal prisoners have died in Myanmese labor camps where they are forced to work under torturous conditions building roads and breaking up stones.
The victims of torture in are political activists, criminal prisoners and members of ethnic minorities. Student activists who have been at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement are also often tortured in detention, while freedom of expression and assembly is almost completely denied to all.
The population of Myanmar is made up of 60 percent Myanmese and 40 percent from more than 130 other ethnic groups and sub-groups. Of the main ethnic groups, 17 have signed somewhat shaky ceasefire agreements with the military regime, while two of them continue in armed insurgency. The ethnic groups are located in the border areas, (Myanmar is surrounded by Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand), surrounding the central Myanmarn area like a great horseshoe.
The EU's interest in Myanmar is primarily informed by humanitarian concerns, as well as by concerns about the supply of illicit drugs. Myanmar is, after Afghanistan, the world's second largest supplier of illicit drugs.
Currently, there is no bilateral cooperation program with Yangon. In accordance with the EU Common Position, commission funding is currently limited to the repatriation and reintegration of Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh (through the UNHCR and other organizations) and a number of small NGO projects working primarily in ethnic minority areas and focusing on water, sanitation, medical care, reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention and care.