Will new UN ruling help the people of Burma?

Unprecedented ruling by the International Labour Organization expected November 30 on forced labour

By: Penny Sanger

  History and the world's memory have deserted the 52 million people of Burma. Their teardrop-shaped country once exported rice, teak and high standards of art and learning throughout southeast Asia. Now, with its agricultural economy in ruins, HIV-AIDS skyrocketing and most people living in poverty, fear and oppression, the generals in charge rely on foreign investment and tourism to keep their rickety regime functioning. Burma is probably the best example there is now of a country whose human and natural resource capital is being destroyed by the current taste for an uncontrolled - and apparently uncontrollable - march of corporate power across the villages, forests, farms and rivers of the globe.
  Yet the brave woman Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whose coalition for democracy 10 years ago won a landslide election which the military continues to ignore, can attract the attention of the world only intermittently
 

Rape, beatings and forced prostitution often go along with forced labour in Burma

  Will this change on November 30 when an unprecedented ruling by the governing council of the International Labour Organization on forced labour in Burma goes into effect ? Will Canadian corporations, especially mining companies, acknowledge the social destruction their investment brings to Burma ?
  The ILO calls on its 167 members, their governments, workers and employers, to "take appropriate measures to ensure that their relations [with Burma] do not perpetuate or extend the system of forced or compulsory labour in that country..."
  The nub of the matter is that no one can visit or do business in Burma without in some way paying into its many-tentacled ruling military system. And the military relies on forced labour. Until this summer, the day after the ILO's commission of inquiry left the country, there was no law against forcing people - mainly villagers and children - to carry out, unpaid and unfed, any jobs the military needed. Given the quality of the Burmese judicial system and the pandemic nature of forced labour in the country this new law is not going to change anything in a hurry.
  Young men and women carry ammunition and gear for soldiers, children break up rocks for new roads, grandmothers clean canals, farmers build barracks. Local military commands commonly force this work on citizens who are told they must "contribute" their labour to the national cause. Rape, beatings and forced prostitution often go along with the job, according to credible reports. It all adds up to merit points in the next life according to its proponents. Farmers also get to hand over their crops and chickens and pigs to the military. They understand that if they say they'd rather eat their own food and spend their time tilling their own fields the soldiers win the argument by burning their villages down.
 

Canada is one of the three biggest investors in Burma this year

  So what will the ILO's appeal to its members and to other international organizations achieve? Sadly, not much more than the new Burmese law, if Canada's experience is any guide.
  First, the venerable ILO has no authority to impose sanctions or, like the UN Security Council, to require its member nations to do so. Second, calling on governments, employers and workers to examine what their foreign investors and other overseas contacts are actually doing in Rangoon is one thing. Getting them to stop is another. Nearly two years of argument between Canadian Friends of Burma and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade about the legitimacy of Canadian-listed mining companies doing business with the regime in Burma ended in a stand-off, the DFAIT lawyers claiming inability to act under current World Trade Organization rules. The next step (when Parliament finally reconvenes) will be to seek a hearing at the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
  Earlier this month Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency listed Canada as one of the three biggest investors (at $21.45 million) in Burma during the first three months of this fiscal year. The other two were Malaysia and South Korea. We know that Vancouver- and Singapore-based Ivanhoe Mines is the biggest foreign mining project in Burma and is expanding. We also know that imports of Burma-made textiles and garments to Canada have more than doubled since former Foreign Minister Axworthy imposed a version of sanctions that amounted only to removing Burma from our list of most favoured nation trading partners.
  The USA imposed sanctions on all new investment in Burma several years ago. Last year the State Department report on Burma stated "Forced labour, including forced child labour has contributed materially to the new industrial parks subsequently used largely to produce manufactured exports including garments." But US imports of garments have risen more than sixfold, to $231.1 millions worth since 1992. Robert Naiman of Washington's Centre for Economic and Policy Research argues that since the US is the destination of two-thirds of Burma's garment exports and these represent one-quarter of the regime's access to G-7 currency, it is time to ban those imports. A US law bans the import of goods made by prison labour and the WTO theoretically allows restrictions on such goods.
  Canada's policy on corporate complicity with human rights abuses abroad is unclear, as the public debate on the Talisman oil company's record in Sudan demonstrated earlier this year. With this ILO ruling behind us and a new parliament ahead human rights activists can put new vigor into their efforts to keep Burma on Canada's moral map.

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