BURMA: Forced Labour Issue May Reach The Hague

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jun 20 2006 (IPS) - Burma’s ruling generals may soon have another badge of notoriety on their chest if they fail to march in step with a global call to end forced labour in the country. The South-east Asian nation could become the first to be taken before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its record of abusive labour practices.

Rangoon has till November to convince members of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) that it means business, this time, in ending the scourge. Two key areas where the junta has been called to account include releasing from prison, by the end of July, civilians arrested for filing complaints to the ILO office in Burma about forced labour and ending prosecutions currently underway.

By end October, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta is officially known, should also have in place ”a credible mechanism for dealing with complaints of forced labour with all necessary guarantees for the protection of complainants”.

The new benchmarks for the junta’s commitment to change were set during the just concluded 95th International Labour Conference (ILC) in Geneva, which was attended by some 3,000 delegates representing the three main pillars of this specialised U.N. agency. They included representatives from the government, workers and employers.

This is not the first time that the SPDC has led the country to achieve pariah status unprecedented on the issue of an abusive labour culture that borders on salvery. During the ILC in June last year, the junta’s refusal to reform resulted in the conference declaring that Article 33 of the ILO constitution should be enforced. It meant that the ILO’s members had the right to impose punitive economic sanctions on Burma – the first time such a ruling was made.

According to Richard Horsey, ILO’s representative in Rangoon, pressure from outside will mean little if the government in Myanmar, as the junta calls Burma, refuses to cooperate. ”Myanmar has now reaffirmed its willingness to cooperate with the ILO in addressing forced labour, and the ILO has indicated what concrete steps are now needed in that direction,” he told IPS.

The key issue, he added, is ”to establish a credible mechanism for dealing with complaints of forced labour, which will give confidence to the victims to complain, and will undermine the impunity of the perpetrators.”

Aye Myint, a Burmese lawyer, is one of the people the ILO has in mind. He is in prison for taking up the call to arms against forced labour. So was Su Su New, a human rights activist who had sued the Burmese authorities for forced labour. She was freed from prison in early June, months ahead of the 18 months sentence she was given since being thrown behind bars in Rangoon’s Insein prison in October last year. Her freedom, say Burmese political activists in exile, was an attempt by the SPDC to win favour at the June ILC.

”In Burma, on any given day, several hundreds thousand men, women children and elderly people are forced to work against their will by the country’s military rulers,” states the Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. ”Refusal to work may lead to being detained, tortured, raped or killed.”

”Military officers issue written forced labour orders everyday,” it adds. The work includes building army camps, carrying ammunition, building bridges and roads and cultivating on military acquired lands.

The condition has worsened since last June, Maung Maung, general secretary of he Federation of Trade Unions-Burma (FTUB), said during a telephone interview. ”Even people in Rangoon are being abducted for forced labour. The people are being sent to camps. Previously it was restricted to the provinces.”

Burma stands out among countries in Asia where forced labour is rampant – a fact reflected in it receiving special scrutiny at ILO meetings. There are an estimated 9.5 million victims of forced labour in the Asia-Pacific region, nearly three-fourths of the global total of 12.3 million trapped in this form of abuse, according to an ILO study.

The ILO’s engagement with Burma took a turn for the worse in 1997, when the SPDC refused to assist an inquiry called for by the global body into this scourge. The report described forced labour in Burma as ”a crime against humanity.”

By June 2000, the ILC began turning the heat on the SPDC by calling for its members to review the relationship they had with Burma. To avoid damage by failing to abide by the Forced Labour Convention of 1930, that it had ratified, the Burmese military agreed to let the ILO open an office in May 2002 to assess the problem.

But as Horsey affirms, hurdles were placed in his way, even resulting in death threats to him and his family in August and September last year. ”Previously, I was addressing complaints on an informal basis, since the agreement reached with the Myanmar authorities in 2003 on the establishment of a ‘facilitator’ mechanism was never implemented,” he says. ”Over the past months, the ILO has not received the cooperation it expected from Myanmar.”

Repeating such a record may prove counterproductive to the junta, if the final statement from the ILC is any indicator. ”The conference set out two areas that required ‘tangible and verifiable’ action from Myanmar,” it states. ”At its November 2006 sessions, the ILO’s governing body would examine whether this actions has been taken and would have full authority to decide on the most appropriate course of action.”