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Burma, a country of 47 million people, is ruled by one of the most brutal and corrupt regimes in the world. A massive military presence of nearly 500,000 personnel denies a whole nation its most basic rights.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO), a United Nations agency, charges Burma’s regime with a ‘crime against humanity’ for its widespread and systematic use of forced labour. It is estimated that up to possibly two million men, women, children and the elderly are forced to labour for the military.
ILO ? International Labour Organisation, a United Nations agency. Its members are from UN countries. The members of the governing body of the ILO are divided between representatives of employers, governments and trade unions.
Forced labour, military extortion and looting continue to be the abuses affecting the largest number of rural people throughout Burma, and together they are artificially creating desperate poverty and depopulating villages throughout the agrarian societies that make up most of the country’s population. Forced labour and extortion are especially prevalent in regions where the Burmese Army is not occupied fighting armed enemies, and many villagers have fled their villages specifically because of these abuses. Forced labour takes on myriad forms, including labour constructing and maintaining roads, railways, and dams, building and maintaining Army camps, acting as servants and sentries at Army camps, clearing roadsides, standing sentry along military access roads, sweeping roads for landmines, acting as messengers and guides for Army officers, forced labour farming for the Army on confiscated land, forced labour digging fishponds, logging, or baking bricks for the personal profit of Army officers, and many other forms. The forced labourers are never paid except in very few cases in urban areas where the labour can be witnessed by tourists, and villagers are usually forced to provide their own food and tools. In most cases it can only be avoided by paying money, but villagers face such a plethora of demands for forced labour that they end up with no money to pay to avoid it. Children are often sent because otherwise the parents have no time to work for food for the family.
Portering for the military is the most feared form of forced labour. Porters are saddled with heavy loads of munitions and supplies and force-marched through the hills, sometimes into battle situations. They receive little or no food and are often beaten, killed or left behind if they become too weak to carry their loads. As landmines become more and more prevalent throughout southeastern Burma, they are increasingly being forced to march in front of military columns to detonate landmines, particularly in Pa’an District of Karen State. Women and children are sometimes deliberately taken for this purpose. However, even in areas where there is no conflict, porters are taken by SPDC units to carry supplies and munitions in areas where there are no good roads. Usually porters are demanded on rotation from villages and grabbed from their farm fields by passing patrols, but whenever there is a need the Army also rounds up men from public places, such as markets, cinemas and train stations in provincial towns.
At the same time as providing many forms of forced labour, villagers are also faced with demands from all the Army units in their area for extortion money, food, and building materials. Eventually many find they can no longer pay the money, provide the forced labour and still survive, so they have no option but to flee their villages. As a result, villages are breaking down even in areas far from any armed conflict.
SPDC ? State Peace & Development Council ? the self appointed name of the ruling military junta. Peace and development are just a dream for most Burmese people.
Gross human rights abuses during forced labour on development projects are commonplace. There have been repeated reports that people forced to work on construction projects suffer beatings, torture and summary execution. The old and infirm are most vulnerable to physical abuse by soldiers, particularly if they stop to rest. In one particular instance a young woman was killed in Chin State, while working on the Pakoku-Kalemyo railway line, after she had stopped working twice to feed her young baby. All her relatives were also working, so they could not care for the child in the village. Some women labourers have been raped at night by soldiers: a Karen woman from Kyaukkyi township who fled to Thailand reported she had been raped at knife point by an army sergeant who had been supervising her work detail while she dug ditches.
Forced labourers receive no medical care, although they commonly suffer from disease, particularly at forced labour sites in areas where malaria is rife. There have been reports of people dying while performing forced labour duties, for example as a result of embankments collapsing. In other cases, workers who have traveled long distances to forced labour projects have suffered because of climatic change. Illness and mortality on forced labour projects is increased by the tendency of households to send their least valuable labourers - children, the elderly, women and the infirm ? to satisfy the forced labour quota. Because the state's requirements for labour contributions have been specified in terms of persons per household, households usually contribute their least valuable labour. Labour gangs working on roads have frequently consisted disproportionately of old women and young girls.
Porters are forced to work for long hours without sufficient food, water or rest. Porters suffer a wide range of injuries and illnesses, including wounds received in battle, or while sweeping for mines or carrying heavy loads. Despite this, porters rarely receive medical attention. Porters who can no longer work are often either abandoned without medical care or assistance, or executed.
The military junta deals brutally and ruthlessly to any threat to their authoritarian rule. Despite the fact that Burma is a signatory to ILO Conventions 87 (freedom of association) and 29 (freedom from forced labour), the regime systematically denies workers the right to organise. The FTUB continues to operate organising workers along the Thai ? Burma border and works internationally to fight for freedom and democracy for the people of Burma. Two of the FTUB leaders, U Khin Kyaw and U Myo Aung Thant have been jailed for 17 years and life respectively for their union activities.
FTUB ? Federation of Trade Unions of Burma. The FTUB is totally banned in Burma.
In November 2000, the ILO Governing Body took a major step in agreeing to an international campaign of action against forced labour in Burma. For the first time in its history it is urging governments, to take appropriate measures to ensure that the Burmese government cannot use its foreign relations to perpetuate the system of forced labour. Governments are asked to bring this to the attention of employers and trade unions and to ask them to join in the action. The international trade union movement as a whole, through the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and the industrial International Trade Secretariats has decided to play a full and active part in this campaign and has backed requests by the ITF for a general campaign of economic sanctions against the Burmese government.
ICFTU ? International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.
Remember that the decision to take action against the military regime of Burma was agreed to by not only the international trade union movement but also employers and governments. You may need to remind them that they should be supportive of any action that you embark upon.
Seek Wider Support ? Ask the trade union movement in your country to participate fully in this campaign. Ask your government to publicly condemn the military regime of Burma and to pledge support to the trade union movement in the fight for change in Burma. Ask employer organisations and employers that your union works with to do the same.
Targeting companies that trade with Burma ? Check if any of the companies that your union has members at trades with Burma. If they do, ask that they stop doing so until real change is achieved in Burma. Be prepared to expose them publicly if they refuse and run a campaign to boycott their goods.
Protest ? Write letters of protest to the Burmese authorities in your country. Press the trade union movement to organise rallies and demonstrations outside their Embassy. Use the media in your campaign.
Education ? Make sure that union members are aware and involved in the campaign. Get their support for the restoration of union rights and the end of forced labour in Burma. Raise the issue at union meetings. Ask the membership to pass resolutions supporting the trade union campaign.
These are just a few suggestions on what your union may do to support the campaign. It is up to individual unions to decide what they can do in their respective countries. But it is essential that the international trade union movement collectively commits to assisting our brothers and sisters in Burma.
Please play your part in freeing the Burmese from the forces of tyranny and terror.
If there are no trade union rights,
there will be no human rights.
