Bangkok/Yangon - In what was hailed as a 'very positive
step,' Myanmar's ruling junta has agreed to set up a mechanism with
the International Labour Organization (ILO) that will enable victims
of forced labour to seek redress, ILO officials said Tuesday.
The agreement between the ILO and Myanmar was reached Monday night
in Geneva.
'It's a very positive step as it could allow us to begin
addressing in a concrete way this problem,' said Richard Horsey,
ILO Liaison Officer in Yangon.
The ILO has been pressuring Myanmar for more than a year to set up
a mechanism whereby complaints of forced labour can be made to their
office in Yangon without fear of imprisonment and intimidation of the
complainants by the authorities, as has happened in the past.
The ILO was to decide at its next session in Geneva starting on
March 8 whether to take the issue to the International Court of
Justice (ICJ) if Myanmar continued to refuse to agree to the
mechanism.
Myanmar's ruling junta at the ILO's last session objected to
several clauses in the Understanding on the mechanism but suddenly
dropped their opposition Monday night. 'The Understanding provides
that alleged victims of forced labour in Myanmar will have full
freedom to submit complaints to the ILO Liaison Officer in Yangon,'
said an ILO press statement made available in Bangkok.
'The Liaison Officer will then make a confidential preliminary
assessment as to whether a case involves forced labour, in order that
such cases can be investigated by the Myanmar authorities and
appropriate action taken against the perpetrators,' it added.
The mechanism, which will implemented on a trial basis for 12
months, will be unique to Myanmar, which has been criticized for a
litany of alleged abuses of human and labour rights over the past two
decades.
Under the agreement, Myanmar's regime guarantees that no
retaliatory action will be taken against complainants and allows the
ILO liason officer to travel within the country to meet complainants
about forced labour.
The mechanism, while unlikely to end forced labour in Myanmar,
could undermine the sense of 'impunity' local authorities have
enjoyed in the past in conscripting villagers for corvee labour or
dangerous jobs in war zones for the government, experts said.
The mechanism was proposed by the ILO after several people who had
registered complaints about forced labour in Myanmar were imprisoned
by the government.
Myanmar has been ruled by the self-styled State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC), a military junta, since 1988 when an army
crackdown on a nationwide pro-democracy movement left more than 3,000
people dead.
The regime earned itself international condemnation for refusing
to hand over power to the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by
Nobel peace prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, after it won the 1990
general election by a landslide.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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