BANGKOK - Ignoring warnings of "far-reaching
and extremely serious consequences", Myanmar's
military rulers have told the International
Labor Organization (ILO) the country
will be quitting the United Nations organization.
Myanmar's Labor Ministry told Francis
Maupain, special adviser to the ILO, during a
visit to Yangon earlier this month that the
government had decided to leave the ILO, and
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 Inter Press Service in a weekend
interview. "However, 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
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 labor."
The notice
period starts from when ILO Director General Juan
Somavia receives the letter, according to a
spokesman. As yet, no formal notification has been
received at ILO headquarters in Geneva.
Nevertheless, the government's statement
of intent does cast a shadow over the future of
the ILO in Myanmar and runs in the face of
Somavia's insistence that the ILO had no
intentions of closing its office in Yangon.
"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 UN
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 Yangon in October with an
open mind, according to ILO insiders. The fact
Myanmar's authorities agreed to the visit was seen
as a good sign, considering the persistent attacks
on the ILO for most of this year and restriction
to the capital city of Yangon of the ILO
representative.
This was the first ILO
mission to Myanmar since the independent
high-level delegation's abortive trip to Yangon in
February. The three members of the team left
Yangon empty-handed. The team included the former
Australian governor-general, Sir Ninian Stephen,
the former Swiss president, Ruth Dreifuss, and
Chung Eui-yong, a former ILO governing body
chairman and former South Korean ambassador to
Geneva now chairman of the ruling party's Foreign
Relations Committee.
They had hoped to get
a concrete commitment from Myanmar's military
leaders that they would continue to cooperate with
the ILO to stamp out forced labor and the ILO
representative would be allowed to travel freely
in the country. But, instead, the situation
deteriorated.
Myanmar has found
particularly unacceptable the creation of a
mechanism by the ILO to help victims of forced
labor 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 met in Geneva next month. The ILO was hoping
to secure a sincere commitment from the regime to
make a concerted effort to eliminate forced labor
and to improve the situation of the ILO
representative in Yangon. Instead, the mission was
told Myanmar intended to leave the ILO.
For months there has been an active public
campaign throughout the country to throw out the
ILO. The pro-government mass organizations - the
Veteran Soldiers Organization, the Union
Solidarity and Development Association, and the
Women's Association - have held mass rallies
condemning the ILO and urging the authorities to
kick out the ILO.
The ILO representative
in Yangon recently has 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 Myanmar'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 stop immediately
all cooperation with the ILO and close down the
Yangon office. Whichever option Myanmar decides
on, the ILO governing body is likely to press for
increased international sanctions when it meets
next month.
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 labor minister said it
was illegal for villagers and workers to report
cases of forced labor to the ILO.
Ten
workers were arrested earlier this year because
they sent evidence of forced labor to the ILO,
according to Ko Ko Naing, an activist with the
Federation of Trade Unions, Myanmar (FTUB). They
were sentenced to several years in jail earlier
this month by a special court in Yangon'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 labor. 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,"
said Ko Tate Naing, secretary of the Burmese
Association for Political Prisoners.
"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 labor," he said.
In
this growing atmosphere of intimidation and
harassment, many labor activists in Myanmar
believe the presence of the ILO in Yangon is
essential if they are to have any measure of
protection. "There are already hundreds of
labor activists and workers wrongfully locked up
in the military's prisons throughout the country,"
Ko Ko Naing told IPS.
