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POLITICS: Burma Ignores More Sanctions to Quit ILO

Larry Jagan

BANGKOK, Oct 30 2005 (IPS) - Ignoring warnings of ”far reaching and extremely serious consequences”, Burma’s military rulers have told the International Labour Organisation (ILO) that the country will be quitting the United Nations labour body.

Francis Maupain, special adviser to ILO, was told by Burma’s labour ministry, during a visit to Rangoon earlier this month, that the government had decided to leave the ILO and that a notice has been prepared and was waiting to be sent.

”From the ILO viewpoint, the decision of any member to withdraw is always to be regretted, irrespective of the circumstances,” Maupain told IPS in a weekend interview.

”However,” Maupain added, ”it has to be remembered that such a decision only becomes irreversible when the two-year notice period expires, assuming the authorities do not change their mind in the meantime.”

”During that period, the country remains a member with all rights and obligations. This is why the most recent mission to Yangon (Rangoon) expressed the hope that cooperation could be maintained in an appropriate way during the notice period, if the authorities remained committed, as they claim and have always claimed, to the eradication of forced labour,” he said.

The notice period starts from the moment the Director General, Juan Somavia, receives the letter, according to an ILO spokesman. As yet, no formal notification has been received at the ILO headquarters in Geneva.

Nevertheless, the government’s statement of intent does cast a shadow over the future of the ILO in Burma and runs in the face of Somavia’s insistence that the ILO had no intentions of closing its office in Rangoon.

”Much may now depend on whether the Burmese regime decides to leave the door open to resolving the problems with the ILO during the two-year notice period,” said a source in the U.N. body.

In recent times, only three countries have quit the ILO – South Africa, under the apartheid regime, the United States in the late 1970s and Vietnam in 1985.

Maupain, a renowned French lawyer with long experience in ILO affairs, visited Rangoon with an open mind, according to ILO insiders. The fact that the Burmese authorities agreed to the visit was seen as a good sign, considering the persistent attacks on the ILO for most of this year and restricting the movement of the ILO representative in Rangoon to the capital city.

This was the first ILO mission to Burma since the independent high level delegation’s abortive trip to Rangoon in February. The three members of the team – former Australian governor-general, Sir Ninian Stephen, former Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss and a former ILO Governing Body chairman and former South Korean ambassador to Geneva, Chung Eui-yong, who is now chairman of the ruling party’s Foreign Relations Committee – left Rangoon empty-handed.

They had hoped to get a concrete commitment from Burma’s military leaders that they would continue to cooperate with the ILO to stamp out forced labour and that the ILO representative would be allowed to travel freely in the country. But, instead, the situation deteriorated.

Burma has found particularly unacceptable the creation of a mechanism by the ILO to help victims of forced labour and regarded this as an invasion of the country’s jealously guarded sovereignty.

Maupain’s lower level mission was intended to clarify the situation before the ILO governing body meet in Geneva next month. The ILO was hoping to secure a sincere commitment from the regime to make a concerted effort to eliminate forced labour and to improve the situation of the ILO representative in Rangoon. Instead, the mission was told Burma intended to leave the ILO.

For months there has been an active public campaign throughout the country to throw the ILO out. The pro-government mass organisations – the Veteran Soldiers Organisations, the Union Solidarity and Development Association and the Women’s Association – have held mass rallies condemning the ILO and urging the authorities to kick the ILO out.

More recently, the ILO representative in Rangoon received more than 20 lurid death threats, according to an ILO statement. ”They threatened to cut off his head and to poison him,” an ILO spokesman said. These threats have since ceased, but no action has been taken by the authorities to investigate who was responsible.

Now that Burma’s decision is on the record, the generals can continue to cooperate with the ILO during the two-year notice period, and possibly withdraw their notice later if the current problems are resolved.

Or, as is more likely, they may decide to immediately stop all cooperation with the ILO and close down the Rangoon office. Whichever option Burma decides on, the ILO Governing Body, when it meets next month, is likely to press for increased international sanctions.

In recent months, the regime has also stepped up its crackdown on workers, especially those who have had contact with the ILO. Earlier this year, the labour minister said it was illegal for villagers and workers to report cases of forced labour to the ILO

Ten workers were arrested earlier this year because they sent evidence of forced labour to the ILO, according to an activist with the Federation of Trade Unions, Burma (FTUB), Ko Ko Naing. They were sentenced to several years in jail earlier this month by a special court in Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison.

A few days later, a young National League for Democracy leader, Su Su Nway, was sentenced by a court in Insein prison to 18 months for allegedly swearing at and threatening local authorities.

Earlier this year, Su Su Nway successfully sued the local authorities for using forced labour. They were given prison sentences. But the authorities counter-sued the activist. “Su Su Nway did not receive a fair trial, and was unjustly sentenced,” according to the secretary of the Burmese Association for Political Prisoners Ko Tate Naing.

”The authorities clearly intended to punish Su Su Nway for her bravery, and in doing so intimidate other villagers into not speaking out against the practice of forced labour,” he added.

In this growing atmosphere of intimidation and harassment, many labour activists in Burma believe the presence of the ILO in Rangoon is essential if they are to have any measure of protection.

”There are already hundreds of labour activists and workers wrongfully locked up in the military’s prisons throughout the country,” Ko Ko Naing told IPS.

 
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