Human Trafficking in [Myanmar (Burma Street Children in [Myanmar (Burma)] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Myanmar (Burma)] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Union of Myanmar (Burma) [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] The Union of Myanmar [map] is one of the
largest countries in Burma is a source country for women,
children, and men trafficked for the purpose of forced labor and commercial
sexual exploitation. Burmese women and children are trafficked to Thailand,
People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.), Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Malaysia,
South Korea, and Macau for commercial sexual exploitation, domestic
servitude, and forced labor. Some Burmese migrating abroad for better
economic opportunities wind up in situations of forced or bonded labor or
forced prostitution. Burmese children are subjected to conditions of forced
labor in Thailand as hawkers, beggars, and for work in shops, agriculture,
fish processing, and small-scale industries. Women are trafficked for
commercial sexual exploitation to Malaysia and the P.R.C.; some women are
trafficked to the P.R.C. as forced brides. Some trafficking victims transit
Burma from Bangladesh to Malaysia and from P.R.C. to Thailand. Internal
trafficking occurs primarily from villages to urban centers and economic hubs
for labor in industrial zones, agricultural estates, and commercial sexual
exploitation. Forced labor and trafficking may also occur in ethnic border
areas outside the central government’s control. Military and civilian
officials continue to use a significant amount of forced labor. Poor
villagers in rural regions must provide corvee labor on demand as a tax
imposed by authorities. Urban poor and street children in Rangoon and
Mandalay are at growing risk of involuntary conscription as child soldiers by
the Burmese junta, as desertions of men in the Burmese army rises. Ethnic
insurgent groups also used compulsory labor of adults and unlawful
recruitment of children. The military junta’s gross economic mismanagement,
human rights abuses, and its policy of using forced labor are the top causal
factors for Burma’s significant trafficking problem. - U.S. State Dept
Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2008 [full country report] |
|
|
CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLE *** Last week in Southeast Asia, I met Aye Aye Win, a young Burmese woman who dared to search for work beyond her own tortured country. A recruiter painted a beautiful picture of work in a neighboring country. Aye Aye assumed substantial debt to cover up-front costs required by the recruiter for this job placement. Together with some 800 Burmese migrants, many children, Aye Aye was "placed" in a shrimp farming and processing factory. But it wasn’t a job. It was a prison camp. The isolated 10-acre factory was surrounded by steel walls, 15 feet tall with barbed wire fencing, located in the middle of a coconut plantation far from roads. Workers weren’t allowed to leave and were forbidden phone contact with any one outside. They lived in run-down wooden huts, with hardly enough to eat. Aye Aye is a brave, daring soul. She tried to escape with three other women. But factory guards caught them and dragged them back to the camp. They were punished as an example to others, tied to poles in the middle of the courtyard, and refused food or water. Aye Aye told me how her now beautiful hair was shaved off as another form of punishment, to stigmatize her. And how she was beaten for trying to flee. Beaten. Tortured. Starved. Humiliated. Is this not slavery?? ***
ARCHIVES *** Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – The government
made limited progress on trafficking in persons during the year. The
government's pervasive security controls, restrictions on the free flow of
information, and lack of transparency prevented a comprehensive assessment of
trafficking in persons activities in the country. While experts agreed that
human trafficking from the country was substantial, no organization,
including the government, was able or willing to estimate the number of
victims. The government did not allow an independent assessment of its
reported efforts to combat the problem. Trafficking of women and girls to Human traffickers appeared to be
primarily free‑lance, small‑scale operators using village
contacts that fed victims to more established trafficking
"brokers". Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 1997 [24] Furthermore, the Committee
expresses its regret that insufficient measures are being taken to address
the problems of child abuse, including sexual abuse, and the sale and
trafficking of children, child prostitution and child pornography. It is
especially concerned by the fact that a significant number of girls, and
sometimes boys, are victims of transnational trafficking for the purpose of
sexual exploitation in brothels across the border. Economic
Crisis Fueling Child Labor, Trafficking The economic crisis and
instability in Burma is driving waves of Burmese children into hard labor,
begging and the sex trade, claims exiled Burmese rights groups. Meanwhile, the results of child
trafficking has had a huge impact on the education of many Burmese migrant
children, forcing the children into hard labor in factories, sweat shops and
even into the sex trade, according to Burmese migrant education groups. Many victims under the age of 18 have become
street beggars and sex workers instead of studying at school, said Paw Ray,
the chairperson of the BMWEC, which operates nearly 50 schools for children
of Burmese migrant workers in Mae Sot. China
claims progress fighting human trafficking There has been a rise in
trafficking cases involving Myanmar women in China in particular in recent
years. The women are mostly smuggled
through the porous border into the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan
and then taken to central and north China, where poverty and a skewed sex
ratio means many farmers cannot find wives.
Late last year, China jailed six Myanmar nationals for selling 23
Myanmar girls to Chinese peasants as wives. Governing
Justly and Combating Human Trafficking: The Linkages The Burmese people represent a
case study of repression at home and then vulnerability abroad. Facing a
cruel regime, bleak economic conditions and the prospect of forced labor at
home, millions of Burmese have had to flee. Among these most vulnerable are
girls and women from Burma's ethnic minorities. Rape is widespread in Burma.
Shan, Karen, Chin, Mon and other ethnic minority women and girls live in
daily fear of sexual violence by their military oppressors. After
successfully escaping slavery in Burma, another cruel fate awaits too many
Burmese. They are preyed upon by traffickers and exploitative employers. They
are pushed into the sex trade or into highly predatory economic sectors in
neighboring countries. Fleeing literal enslavement at home, they face extreme
exploitation in neighboring countries—these women, migrants and refugees are
regularly dehumanized. Myanmar
rebel group denies child soldier claims In a statement released Friday, UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that both the military government and
rebel groups continued to violate children's rights by recruiting underage
soldiers. Citing a recent UN report,
he said that the government was picking up street children or those without
national identity cards and offering them the choice of arrest or joining the
army. Myanmar's military government
officially denies using child soldiers and has passed a law to outlaw the
practice. But human rights groups say
child soldiers in Myanmar remain alarmingly common, with boys as young as 12
recruited to fight the ethnic rebel armies in the country's border regions. - htsc The
Burmese Junta's Hidden Victims Burma's ruling generals systematically
employ forced labor to maintain their repressive grip on the country. The
regime forces men, women and children to work for its benefit -- providing
rice to feed the huge parasitic military force, constructing roads and
buildings, and serving as porters for military convoys and human mine
sweepers in the battlefields in the border regions. As the regime continues
its gross mismanagement of the country and economic and social conditions
deteriorate further, the number of victims of trafficking can only be
expected to grow. Facing bleak economic conditions
and the prospect of forced labor at home, millions of Burmese have had to
flee their homes and villages, usually without legal documents, making them
even more vulnerable to human trafficking and the predations of corrupt
officials. Human
trafficking helps spread HIV/AIDS in Asia: UN "Trafficking ... contributes
to the spread of HIV by significantly increasing the vulnerability of
trafficked persons to infection," said Caitlin Wiesen-Antin, HIV/AIDS
regional coordinator, Asia and Pacific, for the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP). "Both human
trafficking and HIV greatly threaten human development and security." Major human trafficking routes run
between Nepal and India and between Thailand and neighbors like Laos,
Cambodia and Myanmar. Many of the
victims are young teenage girls who end up in prostitution. "The link between human trafficking
and HIV/AIDS has only been identified fairly recently," Wiesen-Antin
told the International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. Last week in Southeast Asia, I met
Aye Aye Win, a young Burmese woman who dared to search for work beyond her
own tortured country. A recruiter painted a beautiful picture of work in a
neighboring country. Aye Aye assumed substantial debt to cover up-front costs
required by the recruiter for this job placement. Together with some 800 Burmese migrants,
many children, Aye Aye was "placed" in a shrimp farming and
processing factory. But it wasn’t a job. It was a prison camp. The isolated 10-acre factory was
surrounded by steel walls, 15 feet tall with barbed wire fencing, located in
the middle of a coconut plantation far from roads. Workers weren’t allowed to
leave and were forbidden phone contact with any one outside. They lived in
run-down wooden huts, with hardly enough to eat. Aye Aye is a brave, daring soul. She tried
to escape with three other women. But factory guards caught them and dragged
them back to the camp. They were punished as an example to others, tied to poles
in the middle of the courtyard, and refused food or water. Aye Aye told me
how her now beautiful hair was shaved off as another form of punishment, to
stigmatize her. And how she was beaten for trying to flee. Beaten. Tortured. Starved. Humiliated. Is
this not slavery?? Myanmar
sentences 33 human traffickers to life imprisonment According to the report, the human
traffickers deceived 49 young Myanmar women to work in a neighboring country,
promising them that they will be well paid.
In lasts September, Myanmar authorities also nabbed a 30-member human
trafficking gang on the Myanmar-China border in cooperation with the Chinese
police force for trafficking 180 Myanmar young women to Ruili in southwest
China's Yunnan Province by means of forced marriage
and fake marriage, according to the Home Ministry. Myanmar
court sentences woman to 12 years for human trafficking A Myanmar court has sentenced a
woman to 12 years in prison for selling two young Myanmar women into
prostitution in Malaysia, state-run media said Saturday. The court in Tachileik, opposite the Thai
town of Mae Sai, sentenced Nang Aye Naw, 41, on Oct. 3 under the
anti-trafficking in persons law, the New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported. The report said the woman enticed two young
women with false promises of finding a job at a restaurant in Mae Sai but
instead sold them at a border town in Malaysia for prostitution. Myanmar government gives highest priority to better tackling issue of trade in people [scroll down] INTERNATIONAL RELATION - SENIOR OFFICIALS MEETING
FOR THE COORDINATED MEKONG MINISTERIAL INITIATIVE AGAINST TRAFFICKING
(COMMIT) OPENS - In Myanmar, we have, as of last year, formed a Specialist
Anti-trafficking Police Unit and Anti-trafficking Task Forces around the
border and other hot spot areas. At the same time, we are of course aware, of
the absolute need to provide psycho-social support to the victims of
trafficking, undertake and improve repatriation and reintegration systems,
and provide rehabilitation services for the victims of trafficking and
vulnerable groups. Myanmar
exposes 748 human trafficking cases in past four years Myanmar authorities have exposed
748 human trafficking cases since the work committee for human trafficking
prevention was formed in July 2002 to June 2006, according to Saturday's
official newspaper The New Light of Myanmar. During the period, subordinate
committees at different levels in 14 states and divisions were able to expose
and arrest 1,484 persons -- 815 males and 669 females, and also rescued in
time 3, 694 persons -- 1,904 males and 1,790 females, the paper disclosed. Three
Women Arrested in Muse for Human Trafficking According to confirmed sources,
some human trafficking syndicates have been dispatching young women from
Burma to China, where they are sold for large sums of money. Myanmar
rejects U.S. report on anti-human trafficking Noting that Myanmar passed an
anti-trafficking in persons law in September 2005 that covers sexual
exploitation, forced labor, slavery, servitude and debt bondage, the release
said during the year, the government prosecuted 426 traffickers in 203 cases
under the new law and identified 844 victims. Mekong
region govts to co-op against human trafficking Since the signing of the historic
COMMIT Memorandum of Understanding in Yangon, Myanmar in October 2004, by
Ministers of the six countries, the Governments have been active in laying
the foundation for a network of cooperation to stop traffickers and prosecute
them, protect victims of trafficking and assist them return safely home, and
launch efforts to prevent others from sharing the same fate. Rice
Names 'Outposts of Tyranny' Condoleezza Rice named Diminished ILO
Visit Spells Trouble When the high-level delegation cut
short its visit and left Rangoon a week ago, it left the regime with a four-point
plan of action: the issuance of clear instructions to the army, and publicity
for a campaign, to stop the use of forced labor; a renewed commitment to the
previously agreed plan of action on forced labor, after the regime has
dragged its feet over the past year; the granting of freedom of movement to
the ILO liaison officer in Rangoon, which has been curtailed significantly
for some time; and the extension of an amnesty to the third of three people
convicted of high treason essentially for having contact with the ILO. 18.
Allegations On Exercising Forced Labor in Myanmar [PDF] This allegation has been widely
and conveniently used against the Government of Myanmar by certain quarters
to disseminate disinformation in the attempt to portray her as a cruel and
wicked regime. U.N.: Myanmar Must Stop Forced Labor "For years we've had a
contradictory message," she said following a meeting of the ILO's
governing body. "There is always a promise to do something, a few little
steps, then a terrible backlash." Sex
Trafficking Growing In S.E.Asia Girls from the villages of 4
Myanmar Officials Get Jail Over Forced Labor Four local officials in Travel Guides and the Burma Debate The Burmese democracy movement,
led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has asked that tourists not
visit Big
Business Keeps Eye on Historic Human Rights Case One of the plaintiffs, Jane Doe,
has testified that her husband was shot when attempting to flee forced labor
on the pipeline, and that her baby was killed when thrown into a fire in
retaliation for his attempted escape. All 12 plaintiffs remain anonymous for
fear of repercussions against them and their family members. The
Protection Project - Myanmar FORMS OF TRAFFICKING - Women and children are
trafficked from Myanmar to Thailand primarily for the purpose of
prostitution. Most of the victims are kept in Thai brothels. An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 Myanmar women
and girls are prostituted in Thailand; however, in 2002, it was estimated
that 10,000 women and children from Myanmar enter into prostitution in
Thailand every year alone. In fact, women and children from Myanmar
constitute the largest number of migrants forced or lured into prostitution
in Thailand. Reportedly, Myanmar women and
girls are commonly sold to Chinese men as mail-order brides and for the
purpose of forced marriage. More than 100 Myanmar women are reported to be
living in the Chinese province of Anhwei alone, where they are exploited by
their Chinese husbands sexually and forced to work on farms and as
housemaids. Freedom House Country Report - Political Rights: 7 Civil Liberties: 7 Status: Not Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide Harsh Policy
Towards Burmese Refugees The Thai government made this
decision, despite the fact that the horrendous conditions in Burma have not
ceased. Burmese continue to flee abuses such as forced labor, persecution of
dissidents, conscription of child soldiers, rape of ethnic minority women and
children by government troops, and forced relocation. Conscripts
- Soldiers of misfortune For years, sein win's job in the
burmese army was to guard citizens who had been forced into hard labor,
building the nation's roads, railways, helipads and barracks. "We
threatened them with guns to make them work," says Sein Win, now 20, who
recently deserted from the military. "No soldier would dare be kind to
the villagers because the officers would beat us if we showed them any
mercy." Now
Program on Burma and the Alien Torts Claims Act Last week on NOW with Bill Moyers,
there was a segment that dealt with this issue and the specific case in Burma
in which several Burmese citizens are suing the oil company, Unocal over
allegations of complicity with slave labor that the Burmese military (which
provided security for a oil pipeline that Unocal was building). Oral
intervention delivered by Anti-Slavery International on 6 April 2004 Restrictions of freedom of
movement, as Rohingya children and their parents are virtually confined to
their village tracts. The need to obtain travel passes limits their access to
health, education and employment, thus severely affecting the livelihood of
the family. In the field of health and
education, they are particularly neglected. Sixty per cent of the Muslim
children of Northern Rakhine State are said to suffer from malnutrition and
the level of illiteracy is extremely high. Restriction of access to food
through a series of constraints, including arbitrary taxation and extortion,
is the main strategy of the regime to encourage departure, and a major root
cause of the ongoing exodus to Bangladesh. Increasingly, measures are being
imposed to control birth and to limit expansion of the Rohingya population.
Unlike other people of Burma, the Rohingyas must apply for permission to get
married, which is only granted in exchange for high bribes and can take up to
several years to obtain. To register their children's birth, parents are
charged fees that significantly increased in 2003. Moreover, building a new
house or repairing or extending an existing dwelling also require
authorisation, resulting in overcrowded and precarious living conditions,
affecting women and children. Many Rohingya children are subject
to forced labour. Cultural practices in the Rohingya community prevent women
from participating in activities outside of their homes. As male adults are
busy earning the daily wage to feed the family, the burden of carrying out
forced labour duties often falls on children. Solar Health Clinics in Burma http:/wire0.ises.org/wire/CurrentAffairs/RENews.nsf/0/e7c0f9a3c3f75452c1256e99003625d2?OpenDocument BACKGROUND - The Eastern area of Burma
(often referred to as Myanmar), along the border with Thailand is a zone that
has been under siege for the past several decades. The Burmese military have
been constantly oppressing the indigenous peoples of this area, burning
villages and crops, forcing men and women into slavery, raping, and killing. US
House of Reps. Extends Burma Sanctions in Landslide The regime's brutality is well-documented. According to credible nongovernmental organizations, it has imprisoned over 1,500 political prisoners, conscripted up to 70,000 child soldiers, carries out a modern form of slavery, and uses rape as a weapon of war. Case
Study: Corvée (Forced) Labour FOCUS (4): MYANMAR (BURMA) TODAY - Forced labour in Myanmar/Burma
involves large numbers of children and women as well as adult males. In 1998,
the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights "specifically
addressed the issue of women victims of forced labour. ... He noted that
increasing numbers of women, including young girls and the elderly, had
reportedly been forced to work, without receiving remuneration or being
provided with food, on infrastructure projects and to act as porters in war
zones, even when they were pregnant or nursing their infants. ... They had
been reported to have been used not only as porters, but also as human
shields and had been sexually abused by soldiers" (para. 190).
Frequently, women, along with children of both sexes, are conscripted into
corvée labour when male heads of household must work to provide the family
income: in most cases, the military insists that one or more persons from a
household be turned over for forced labour, but places no restrictions on
gender or age. An exception to the general willingness to draft female labour
is the corvée imposed upon the Rohingya people from the Rakhine State in
northern Myanmar, one of the ethnic groups most extensively targeted for the
practice. Among the Rohingya, "the burden of forced labour ... fell
entirely on the male members of the household." "Trading Women"
Filmmaker Shatters Myths about Human Trafficking IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM IN ASIA - "One thing our research
showed, for a highland girl in Thailand -- not from across the border -- the
single greatest risk factor to being trafficked or otherwise exploited is
lack of citizenship. If you don't have citizenship, you cannot get a diploma
nor are you allowed to travel outside your area. It creates vulnerabilities
and there are between 400,000 and 500,000 hill people in Thailand who are not
citizens, meaning they are vulnerable," Feingold said. "If you look at where the key
problem of trafficking is (in this area of Southeast Asia), it is in Burma.
The majority of girls who are trafficked come from Burma. For the Shan women,
the way they express their choices are to stay home and get raped by the
Burmese army for free, or come down to Thailand and do sex work for money.
This is not a choice anyone should ever have to make," he said. Thailand
struggles to halt human trafficking Local migrant advocacy groups say
the Chiang Mai raid, like other actions taken against human trafficking, had
netted Burmese women voluntarily engaged in prostitution. Now, they say,
those women may be worse off than before. These groups accuse the US-funded
anti-trafficking task force that led the raid of steamrolling women's rights
and treating all sex workers as victims. "The women didn't feel like they
were rescued because they lost their money.... They felt like they were
trapped," says Hseng Noung, of the Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN),
who interviewed ethnic Shan women detained in the raid. "Being forced to
work physically is one thing, but these women were forced to work by their
situation." Oil-gas giant
faces landmark trial over slavery in Myanmar The soldiers' true role was to
force villagers in the pipeline region to work without pay -- a modern form
of slavery, the 9th Circuit opinion said.
And Unocal knew, both before and after investing in the project, that
the military was enslaving the people, the opinion said. Unocal's own consultant, former
military attache John Haseman, reported to Unocal in December 1995 that the
soldiers were committing "egregious human rights violations" along
the pipeline route. "The most
common are forced relocation without compensation of families from land
near/along the pipeline route, forced labor to work on infrastructure
projects supporting the pipeline ... and imprisonment and/or execution by the
army of those opposing such actions," Haseman told Unocal in a report
quoted in court records. Thai
families partners in child sex trade - Border area's products are drugs and
daughters When Burmese migrant Ngun Chai
sold his 13-year-old daughter into prostitution for $114, his wife, La, had
one regret -- they didn't get a good price for her. "I should have asked for 10,000 baht
($228)," La Chai said. "He robbed us." She was angry that the agent who bought her
eldest child, Saikun, in 1999 took her to Bangkok, some 460 miles away,
rather than a nearby city as promised. It did not concern La Chai that Saikun
would be forced to have sex with as many as eight men a day. New Coalition
urges UK Government to stop investment in Burma Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said:
"Burma's military has put millions of civilians into forced labour,
imprisoned hundreds of political prisoners, has created more child soldiers
than any other country in the world, and has forcibly 'relocated' half a
million ethnic people". Millions Suffer in Sex Slavery http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/4/23/184354.shtml Statistical estimates indicate
300,000 women have been sold into the sex trade in Western Europe in the last
10 years, and since 1990, 80,000 women and children from Myanmar (formerly
Burma), Cambodia, Laos and China have been sold into Thailand's sex industry.
Silver
Cos. needn't look far to find some slave-museum artifacts Last year, the ILO condemned the
Burmese military's "widespread and systematic" use of forced labor
as "a modern form slavery," and called on governments, labor
unions, and employers to take steps to ensure they were not helping to
sustain the Burmese junta's practice of enslaving its citizens. There are a couple of ways that
Burmese imports enrich Burma's slavemasters and contribute to their ability
to continue enslaving people, according to the Free Burma Coalition. First, Burma's military dictatorship
charges a 5 percent tax on all exports from Burma, and much of that revenue
goes straight to the military. Second, the junta retains partial ownership of
most factories in Burma, with profits going largely to the military. Moreover, the coalition says, Burmese
imports never even would have made it to places like Central Park had it not
been for roads and other infrastructure back in Burma that were built with
slave labor. ILO
team completes mission to assess forced labor in Myanmar An International Labor
Organisation (ILO) team has completed a six-day mission to Myanmar to assess the
junta's efforts to stamp out forced labor, officials said Friday. "They are not completely
happy with what they have seen so far, and want to see more progress being
made (on ending forced labor)," the source said. "However, there are signs of goodwill
on the part of the Burmese, who were cooperative. The team managed to see
everyone they wanted to see." 2000
Update on Forced Labor and Forced Relocations Since the Department of Labor's
1998 report, there has been little change in the situation with regard to the
use of forced labor in Burma. However, there has been some significant action
by the International Labor Organization (ILO) on this matter. Forced labor
continues to be used with impunity by authorities throughout the country for
infrastructure development projects and to support military operations.
Reports also suggest that people continue to work under very poor conditions
and suffer from human rights abuses. There is little new information with
regard to allegations of forced labor related to the Yadana Pipeline.
Available information suggests that forced relocations are becoming a growing
problem in Burma, and forced labor often goes hand in hand with the policy of
forced relocations. While the circumstances in Burma may not have improved
greatly, the international community has taken an additional action against
the current regime through the ILO's adoption of an emergency resolution on
forced labor in Burma, which resulted in the exclusion of Burma from almost
all participation in the ILO. UK firm
linked to Burma slavery The Burmese have been accused of
using "security" issues in the pipeline area of Tanasserim to drive
ethnic Karen people from the land. There are now 120,000 Karen living in
refugee camps and human rights groups say at least 30,000 Karen have been
killed. The army's tactics include rape and summary executions. The report says the army was
extorting money from local people and using children and forced unpaid labour
- described by the special UN rapporteur to Burma as a modern form of slavery
- to build military barracks.
"The harsh conditions of those carrying out the labour, including
young children and the testimony of local people, belies the government claim
that such work is voluntary," said the report. [scroll down]
The country of Burma is lush, rich in natural resources and home to
dozens of peoples and cultures. But
due to a military government of isolationist economic mismanagement, the 45
million people there live without their human rights and in extreme
poverty. The country of Burma has been
under military dictatorship since 1962. The
Boston Tea Party Revisited:Massachusetts Boycotts Burma Political repression. When the
military government of Burma lost more than 80 percent of the seats in
parliament to the National League for Democracy in 1990, it repudiated the
election and began closing NLD offices and jailing the party’s legislators.
The government has waged war against rural ethnic minorities, who supported
the NLD commitment to create a federal system with regional self-government. Forced labor. Burma is building
its commercial infrastructure with labor forced at the point of a gun. In the
previous decade, more than 5.5 million people have been forced to work on
construction of airport runways, railroads, highways and agricultural
irrigation systems. Seven percent of Burma’s economy is based on this
slavery. Rape and brutality. The most common
form of forced labor is military portering. Even old people, women and
teenagers are required to carry military supplies on their backs. Porters are
forced to walk ahead of troops to detonate mines and act as human shields in
combat against Burma’s own ethnic minorities. Soldiers often beat porters
with rifle butts and have forced teenagers to execute other porters who could
no longer work. Women porters are separated at night from the men and are
frequently raped by the soldiers. Displacement
of populations in Western Burma (Myanmar) In Burma, the widespread
repression of ethnic minorities and the countrywide practice of forced labour
as documented in the ILO Commission of Inquiry report dated 2 July 1998, have
led to an unprecedented displacement of populations. Unwanted and
Unprotected:Burmese Refugees in Thailand SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS - At almost no time since Burmese
asylum seekers started arriving on Thai soil in 1984 has the need for
protection of this group been greater.1
Human rights violations inside Burma continue almost a decade after the State
Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) seized power in Burma in September
1988. The announcement on November 15, 1997 that SLORC had been dissolved and
replaced by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has done nothing
to improve the situation, and refugees continue to flow into Thailand. As of
September 1998, there were over 110,000 refugees in camps along the
Thai-Burmese border and hundreds of thousands more in Thailand who were
unable or unwilling to stay within the refugee camps but who had suffered
clear abuse at the hands of the Burmese government. Deportations of
undocumented Burmese migrants, some of whom would have a clear claim to
refugee status had they been permitted to make one, were also on the
increase. MODERN
FORM OF SLAVERY: TRAFFICKING OF BURMESE WOMEN AND GIRLS INTO BROTHELS IN
THAILAND - . Thousands of
Burmese women and girls are trafficked into Thai brothels every year where
they work under conditions tantamount to slavery. Subject to debt bondage,
illegal confinement, various forms of sexual and physical abuse, and exposure
to HIV in the brothels, they then face wrongful arrest as illegal immigrants
if they try to escape or if the brothels are raided by Thai police. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use |
|
Human Trafficking in [Myanmar (Burma Street Children in [Myanmar (Burma)] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Myanmar (Burma)] [other countries]