The Irrawaddy Magazine |
- Big Hurdles Ahead in Rangoon Trash Cleanup
- Burmese Migrants ‘Wrongfully Accused’ in Murder Case: Rights Group
- UN Torture Watchdog Questions China over Crackdown on Activists, Lawyers
- All Work and Not Much Pay for India’s Manufacturers
- Burmese Domestic Worker Rescues Sister from Decade of Slavery
- North Korea Says Laborers Work Abroad Legally, Denies Mistreatment
| Big Hurdles Ahead in Rangoon Trash Cleanup Posted: 18 Nov 2015 04:19 AM PST  Municipal pull trash from the city's drainage system. (Photo: Steve Tickner / The Irrawaddy) AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — With the UN Climate Change Conference due to sit in Paris at the end of November, ecological issues are once again creeping back into the global agenda. With the climate talks on the horizon, last month The Irrawaddy was invited along with seven other regional journalists to examine some of the innovative recycling projects underway in the Netherlands. The tour, organized by the Holland Branding agency and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, aimed to showcase the work of factories, banks, film projects and local governments involved in either bankrolling, promoting or manufacturing recycled goods. On our visit to Amsterdam, we met Peter Smith, an artist and photographer who started the Klean Foundation to raise awareness of the environmental impact of garbage on the city's waterways. For the last two years, he has been wandering the canals that ring the capital, collecting litter to fashion into a 12-meter tall statue of the Virgin Mary, which he has dubbed the 'Plastic Madonna'. "At least 8 million tons of trash are going from the canals to the ocean every year," Smith told journalists, adding that if the trend continued, "our children will have to eat plastic soup in the future." Elsewhere, we saw municipalities sending refuse to be refashioned into shopping bags and toilet paper, while factories salvaged parts from some of the 400,000 tons of electric appliances discarded annually in the Netherlands. The scene was a far cry from Rangoon, where gutters and drains are perennially clogged with debris, and the grounds of the alleys behind apartment blocks are impossible to discern through piles of rotting food waste and plastic litter. Waste collection in the commercial capital of Burma is rudimentary and suffers from a lack of municipal funding. Lowly paid teams of collection workers from the Yangon City Development Committee (YCDC), often starting in the evening and working into the late hours, roam the streets and collect garbage bags into pushcarts. Fighting off the occasional stray dog, and mindful of the occasional speeding car racing down otherwise deserted streets, workers push their carts back to waiting garbage trucks, which usually take their cargo to be dumped at one of two landfills on the city's outskirts—either Dawei Chaung in North Dagon or Htein Bin in Hlaing Tharyar. At present, none of the 1,500 tons of garbage collected by the YCDC is recycled. With the assistance of $8.2 million in Japanese economic aid, the municipal government plans to open a $16 million recycling plant in Mingaladon in 2017. Even once it is fully operational, it will only be able to recycle 60 tons of rubbish per day, less than 5 percent of the city's total waste production. Win Myo Thu, cofounder of the environmental NGO Eco-Dev, said that there was little local understanding of the environmental impact of household garbage, and all levels of government into Burma needed to lead a cultural change. He pointed to the recent development of waste-to-energy plants at Dawei Chaung and Htein Bin as a positive interim step before more sophisticated recycling projects were introduced, such as the separation of recyclable materials from other household waste. "Most people don't know how to use waste materials effectively, that's why we're now encouraging waste-to-energy projects by the government," he said. "[But] the government has to give people the incentive for recycling projects." Both power plants now have a combined operational capacity of 37.4 megawatts after a staged construction in the last two years. Khin Hlaing, a member of the YCDC's central committee, stressed that better education was needed to reduce pollution around Rangoon and make recycling projects more attractive to investors. "People awareness is still weak, they need to know the right way to discard their rubbish," he said. The post Big Hurdles Ahead in Rangoon Trash Cleanup appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Burmese Migrants ‘Wrongfully Accused’ in Murder Case: Rights Group Posted: 18 Nov 2015 03:08 AM PST  Burmese migrant workers suspected of murder during a crime re-enactment in the southern Thai border town of Ranong on Oct. 27. (Photo: Foundation for Education and Development) CHIANG MAI, Thailand — Nearly one month after four Burmese migrant workers were arrested in connection with the murder of a Thai teenager, a migrants' rights group is saying the suspects have been wrongfully accused. Wai Lin, Moe Zin Aung, Kyaw Soe Win and Sein Kadone, all of whom work in Thailand's fisheries industry, were arrested last month in connection with the stabbing death of a 19-year-old Thai woman on Sept. 28 in the southern Thai province of Ranong. Though the suspects remain in Thai detention, police do not have enough evidence to bring their case to court, according to Htoo Chit, director of the Foundation for Education Development (FED) and a member of the Burmese Embassy-led Protecting Committee for Burmese Migrants Staying in Thailand, which aims to coordinate and provide assistance to migrants in need. "Their employer witnessed that they were at work when the murder happened," Htoo Chit told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, adding that the four men's employer also provided CCTV footage to law enforcement authorities as additional evidence in the case. As for why his team has decided to represent the four migrant workers, Htoo Chit said their support was because the men have been "wrongfully accused." The four men were made to go through a crime scene re-enactment on Oct. 27. Htoo Chit, however, believes that this was a forced act and that the suspects are in no way linked to the young woman's brutal murder. Their case is the second in the last year to throw into sharp relief the fraught situation faced by many of Thailand's migrant workers, who often take on dangerous employment without adequate pay or legal protection. Last year the murder of two British backpackers on southern Thailand's Koh Tao island sent shockwaves through the country and then, as with the latest case, the finger of blame was pointed at Burmese laborers, Zaw Lin and Wai Phyo. A verdict in the Koh Tao case is due on Dec. 24. FED is expected to meet with the four accused in Ranong, as well as Thai lawyers, on Thursday. The post Burmese Migrants 'Wrongfully Accused' in Murder Case: Rights Group appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| UN Torture Watchdog Questions China over Crackdown on Activists, Lawyers Posted: 17 Nov 2015 09:36 PM PST  Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations Wu Hailong, left, stands for a photo alongside foreign envoys from seven other countries in Lausanne, Switzerland, on April 2, 2015. (Photo: Ruben Sprich / Reuters) GENEVA — UN rights experts pressed senior Chinese officials on Tuesday about persistent allegations that torture is rife in their police stations and prisons, especially of political prisoners, and about deaths in custody. China said it was working to combat torture but that it had not been eliminated. The United Nations Committee against Torture's regular examination of Beijing's record came after what the group Human Rights in China says has been "a year of massive crackdowns on rights activists and lawyers" on the mainland. Chinese government officials told the 10 independent experts that their country was working to eliminate torture, including through better training of police and prison guards, and audio and video recordings of interrogations. "Our efforts have produced major progress in our combat against torture," Wu Hailong, China's ambassador who heads its delegation of 39 senior officials, told the UN group, which is also reviewing the records of Hong Kong and Macao. "Since 2014, public security authorities have comprehensively adopted the audio and video recording system for the entire process of interrogation of criminal suspects for major cases, and will gradually apply this system to all criminal cases," he said. Illegally obtained evidence and forced self-incrimination of detainees are banned, Wu said, "thus preventing interrogation through torture." He conceded that there was "still a long and arduous path ahead before elimination of torture." Committee member George Tugushi raised various issues, including the use of "rigid chairs, electric shocks and weightened leg cuffs" on detainees. Sleep deprivation remains lawful and mental torture is not explicitly banned. "We have received reports that torture is particularly pervasive in black jails," Tugushi said, referring to facilities outside the official prison system. Deaths in Custody "Please explain the deaths that have occurred in Chinese detention facilities because people were unable to obtain [medical] treatment on time, based on a number of reports the committee has received," Tugushi said. Other committee members suggested China establish an independent monitoring body to investigate torture and questioned the treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in prison clinics, including alleged electric shocks. Amnesty International said last week that China's criminal justice system relies heavily on forced confessions obtained through torture, including beatings and the use of iron restraint chairs. Dissidents and minorities are at highest risk. Defense lawyers who raise claims of abuse are often threatened "or even detained and tortured themselves," it said, adding that 12 Chinese lawyers and activists are currently detained on state security charges. Wu said that China's 270,000 lawyers played an increasingly vital role in "law-based governance, protection of human rights and combating torture." "Lawyers are an indispensable part of China's rule of law," he said. The post UN Torture Watchdog Questions China over Crackdown on Activists, Lawyers appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| All Work and Not Much Pay for India’s Manufacturers Posted: 17 Nov 2015 09:19 PM PST  A worker separates casting joints of gearboxes inside a small-scale automobile manufacturing unit in Ahmedabad, India, on Oct. 12, 2015. (Photo: Amit Dave / Reuters) VADODARA, India — In the office of the small paint factory he helps run, Pramod Patel is clear on the problem holding back India's manufacturing growth: cash, or a lack of it. Clients, he says, are taking months to pay, sometimes 150 days compared to the standard 30, choking up businesses like his Reliable Paints and hampering the creation of much-needed jobs. "We have a lot of potential in our business, but we have no confidence in the payments," says Patel, speaking over the noise of a mixer whirring behind him. Workers around him prepare paint to be decanted by hand into cream and gray colored cans. While there is no comprehensive data for the cash cycle of India's manufacturing industry, manufacturers interviewed by Reuters in the industrial heartland of Gujarat say cash is moving at a glacial pace. All those interviewed by Reuters reported clients delaying payments, sometimes for the best part of a year, evidence of an uneven recovery and of India's credit drought as banks tackle US$100 billion of troubled loans. Central bank data shows that loans to medium-sized industrial companies were down 10 percent by mid-September, compared to the start of the financial year in April. Loans to small companies dropped more than 3 percent in the period. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who once ran Gujarat as chief minister, India has sought to improve life for manufacturers. He wants to boost a sector that accounts for under a fifth of the economy, compared to a third for China, the world's largest manufacturer. But the reality on the ground is tough. Even India's industrial bellwether, Larsen & Toubro, has reported deterioration. Chief financial officer R. Shankar Raman says payments take around 100 days after they fall due, compared to a standard 60-75 days. That is hovering around the longest payment period in over a decade, he said. 'Made in India' India badly needs manufacturing to fuel its recovery and create jobs. After all, India will be home to a working age population of 900 million people by 2020, roughly a fifth of the world's potential workers. Modi's government has promised to make it simpler to operate in the country, with plans for a unified bankruptcy code, a unified goods and service tax, and more flexible labor laws. Last week, it lifted restrictions on foreign investment in 15 sectors, including defense. But in this corner of Gujarat—a state that was ranked top in a World Bank-supported study on the ease of doing business in India's 29 states—manufacturers say the smallest and weakest among them could be pushed to the wall, unless reform is implemented and recovery arrives swiftly. A plethora of different taxes still wrap small firms like Reliable Paints in red tape. Others report battling outdated factory rules: Some are fined for a lack of spittoons, for example, in areas where spitting on the floor is forbidden. There are signs of hope. L&T's Raman says he expects the numbers to have hit the bottom, provided promised government spending kicks in and banks pass on lower rates. "The way the recovery is structured right now, it is not broad-based," said economist Sonal Varma at Nomura. Government spending, however, could improve cash flows even for smaller firms within six to 12 months, she estimates. Gujarat, for one, has pushed taxes online, cutting down on the paperwork and opportunities for corruption, and manufacturers say that had made processes smoother. But until reforms come in, the bureaucracy is overhauled and real spending starts, factory managers in this baked corner of Gujarat—where paints, pumps and engineering parts dominate production —say their clients will continue to struggle. "Our big problem is client liquidity," said the director at one European firm supplying the construction industry. "And of course we have to deal with bureaucracy and corruption." Four years after shutting an office in Mumbai, he said he was still battling to conclude the process. And with lots of workers, India needs more skilled ones. "We have a young workforce," said Vivek Sarwate, who runs plants outside the city of Vadodara for Schneider Electric, making components for the Indian power sector. "But if this young country is not a skilled country, instead of an asset, this becomes a liability." The post All Work and Not Much Pay for India's Manufacturers appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| Burmese Domestic Worker Rescues Sister from Decade of Slavery Posted: 17 Nov 2015 08:56 PM PST  Aye Than Dar, right touches the head of her sister Hla Thidar Myint at a park in Bangkok on Saturday. (Photo: Athit Perawongmetha / Reuters) BANGKOK — When Aye Than Dar and her little sister Hla Thidar Myint paid a broker in Mon State to smuggle them to Thailand for domestic work, it was the start of a decade-long ordeal that would see the pair separated and Hla held as a slave. After paying the broker $600 to get them over the border, Aye and Hla were sent to work in separate homes in Ban Pong, in Thailand’s Ratchaburi province, west of Bangkok. “When we arrived in Thailand, an agent came to pick us up. We got jobs in two different places in Ratchaburi, but we didn’t know where each of us was sent, so we couldn’t contact each other,” Aye said. It was February 2004, and Aye heard nothing from her sister until she found her more than nine years later. Hla, who is intellectually disabled, had been barred contact with her family and denied a salary. “She was completely unable to go outside by herself. She could only go with her boss. She never knew what her salary was. When she wanted something, she had to ask her boss,” said Aye, now 34, sighing in frustration. Hla would start work at 4am, mop the floor and clean her employer’s stationery shop. After that she cleaned the house. “He let me go to sleep at 8pm., but I would stay up watching soap operas,” Hla, 32, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview with the sisters at a McDonald’s in Bangkok. Thailand hosts around 3 million migrant workers, 80 percent of them from Burma. They take jobs in construction, agriculture, the seafood industry and domestic work. While many migrants work in what campaigners call “3D” jobs that are dirty, dangerous and demeaning, domestic workers can suffer the most abuse because they work behind closed doors, in isolation, hidden from public view. Many employers, like Hla’s, think they are being generous by taking in poor young women and having them do household chores—often not seen as real work— in exchange for room and board. They say they treat their maids “like family”. “I want to vomit when I hear this. It’s too often that employers say things like this. Will you treat your sister or your mum like this?” said Elizabeth Tang, the general secretary of the International Domestic Workers Federation. “This is a huge perception problem: employers like this think they are actually doing charity because this worker came from Burma, she didn’t speak the language. She was alone, she just arrived. She had no job, so taking her into the house and giving her food and a place to sleep was a big charity.” Clues Aye had no idea what had happened to her sister. Five or six years after they had gone to Thailand, came the first clue: Hla’s boss sent pictures of her to the family’s home in Burma. “I realised she was alive, still in Ban Pong,” said Aye, who is now a domestic worker in Bangkok and a member of Network of Migrant Domestic Workers which supports Burmese women. “Why didn’t she try to reach us? Why couldn’t we contact her?” At the end of 2012, Aye made a push to find her sister, whom she refers to by her Thai nickname, Rak. She had just scraps of information to go by. “When Rak’s photo was sent to us, it included her migrant identification number, along with the name of the broker in Thailand,” she explained. A Ban Pong district officer suggested Aye contact a man who was well connected in the community. He recognised Hla from her photo, and said he had seen her somewhere before. Six months later he contacted Aye to say he had found her. In June 2013, Aye went to the house and rang the doorbell. Hla’s boss asked for proof she was their housemaid’s sister, including her passport and visa. Aye also showed them a photograph of Hla as a child. Eventually, he let her in. “When she came out, I was so happy, I cried,” Aye recalled. “But she was emotionless. I asked her, ‘Why didn’t you go home?’ She said she didn’t know how to go home. The employer told me to pick her up in a week, but I took her that day.” Gold Necklace Despite having paid her nothing for nine years, Hla’s Thai boss was convinced he had treated her well. Unlike many domestic workers, Hla had suffered no physical abuse. “He said, ‘I’ve been taking care of your sister as if she were my own daughter or niece. I didn’t give her a monthly salary. She’s a good person. I’ve been saving her money for her. She wouldn’t have known how to save it. I also bought her some gold.’ “He brought out a gold necklace, and said he would give her 200,000 baht ($6,500).” He handed over her passport, saying he hoped she would return to continue working for him. Aye took her home to Burma, finding Hla in physically bad shape, and unable to make simple decisions, like choose her clothes. “When I found her, she had very bad breath, it was hard to even talk to her face to face, and I had to take her to the dentist. She had to have a tooth pulled and some fillings. “She didn’t know how to go home, so I took her all the way there. I stayed only one day because I had to go back to work. She stayed for four months.” There was no work at home. Aye suggested a new job in Thailand, but remarkably, Hla, who had become accustomed to her life, and didn’t see herself as a slave, wanted to go back to her old employer. “She said that she understood how things worked at her boss’s house and wasn’t comfortable working in a new place. Her brain couldn’t handle it,” said Aye. So Aye took her sister back, giving her a phone, and demanding a monthly salary of 7,000 baht ($195) and one day off per week. “We settled on 6,000 baht ($165). She worked every day,” said Aye. “Her employer says that since I got involved with my sister, she has changed. She is no longer obedient and likes to talk back.” On Nov. 3, Aye went to the house again, to take her sister away, this time for good. They will return home in December to see their father who is about to have eye surgery, and their youngest sister who is graduating from university. At McDonald’s, the two sisters, dressed in fitted jeans, pretty blouses and chunky-soled flip flops, seemed to blend in with other women in Bangkok. Only their accents gave them away as Burmese, and the worn, peeling skin on Hla’s fingers hinted at the years of hard work. “This time, I don’t want to go back,” Hla said, looking to her sister for reassurance. “My boss doesn’t like my sister, so I think I just want to go home and work at home for my parents.” The post Burmese Domestic Worker Rescues Sister from Decade of Slavery appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
| North Korea Says Laborers Work Abroad Legally, Denies Mistreatment Posted: 17 Nov 2015 08:47 PM PST  North Korean Ambassador Ri Hung Sik speaks to reporters in New York on Tuesday. (Photo: Mike Segar / Reuters) NEW YORK — North Korea said on Tuesday it has sent laborers to work abroad legally in Russia, China and elsewhere and that it was a “vicious slander” to say they were mistreated or forced to go. UN human rights investigator Marzuki Darusman last month raised concerns that North Korea (DPRK) has forced some 50,000 people to work abroad “under overall conditions that reportedly amount to forced labor.” He urged countries where they have been sent to grant him access to investigate. “They are saying thousands of DPRK laborers are under harsh treatment and they are engaged in forced labor,” Ri Hung Sik, ambassador-at-large for the North Korean Foreign Ministry, said at a news conference in New York. “This is totally false. This is fabricated,” he said. “This is vicious slander towards my republic.” Ri said North Koreans were working in countries including Russia, China, Kuwait and Angola but could not say how many were working abroad. “We have our laborers working in foreign countries under legal contract,” he said. Darusman told a UN General Assembly committee last month that the laborers were sent abroad to circumvent sanctions and earn foreign currency that amounted to between $1.2 billion and $2.3 billion annually. The committee is expected to vote this week on a resolution drafted by the European Union and Japan that would condemn human rights abuses in North Korea. The vote is an annual occurrence but Ri urged the European Union and Japan to withdraw their draft resolution and “remedy their own shortcomings and reflect on their dire human rights situations before they criticize the others.” The UN Security Council also added the issue of human rights in North Korea to its agenda in December, after a UN Commission of Inquiry report detailed abuses in the impoverished country that it said were comparable to Nazi-era atrocities. UN diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said the council could hold a second meeting on human rights in North Korea next month when the United States is president of the 15-member body. “It is not an organ to deal with human rights issues,” Ri said of the Security Council. North Korea is under UN sanctions for carrying out nuclear tests and missile launches. In addition to an arms embargo, Pyongyang is banned from trading in nuclear and missile technology and is not allowed to import luxury goods. The post North Korea Says Laborers Work Abroad Legally, Denies Mistreatment appeared first on The Irrawaddy. |
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Taking the political temperature: How do you think the transition of power will go, and what will be the priorities over the next few months?
