The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Commission of Inquiry for Myanmar is calling on the military regime to end its ongoing egregious violations of two ILO conventions and prevent future abuses of workers, following an investigation into labor abuses.
Trade union members and leaders have been killed, arbitrarily arrested, subjected to sham trials, convicted, detained, abused and tortured, threatened [and] intimidated since the 2021 coup, the commission said in a detailed report released Thursday.
Trade union members and leaders have also been subjected to surveillance, forced into exile, deprived of their basic civil liberties and oppressed at their workplaces due to their trade union membership and activities, according to the report “Towards Freedom and Dignity in Myanmar.”
“Women trade union leaders have been exposed to particularly violent treatment on the part of the security apparatus, including sexual violence,” the report notes.
It urged “Myanmar military authorities” to immediately cease all forms of violence, torture and other inhumane treatment against trade unionists and to end all forms of forced labor.
The report focused on flagrant violations of two ILO Conventions: the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organize Convention (No. 88) and the Forced Labor Convention (No. 29).
The Myanmar military is forcing civilians to perform a range of different types of labor, including using them as porters, guides and human shields, the investigation by the commission found. Junta troops are also using forced labor for farming, construction and maintenance of military camps or installations, and for providing transport, accommodation, food and domestic work, the report said.
Forced labor by the junta’s military is ongoing, systematic and widespread, the investigation found.
Moreover, the military has also forced businesses “to perform their services during days of ‘silent strikes’ in the context of the Civil Disobedience Movement, which amounts to forced or compulsory labor within the meaning of the convention,” the report said.
The commission also found that prisoners who have been convicted in legal proceedings that lack independence, impartiality and due process are not covered by an exception to the convention that allows some forms of work for prisoners.
The National Forced Labour Complaints Mechanism was set up in 2019, but the commission found that it has not received any complaints since the coup.
The commission found that the legal measures imposed by the military authorities since the coup—as well as actions taken by the military, the police and the administrative authorities under their control—have had a disastrous impact on the exercise of basic civil liberties essential to the rights protected by Convention No. 88.
The commission was established by the ILO Governing Body in March 2022, following the coup in February 2021 and the military’s subsequent suppression of pro-democracy protests.
It was tasked with assessing reports of violence against trade union leaders, severe and repeated violations of basic civil liberties, and the resurgence of forced labor.
The report calls on all relevant parties to strive to achieve a peaceful transition to fully democratic rule.
The report of the Commission of Inquiry has been sent to the Permanent Mission of Myanmar in Geneva. Myanmar has three months to announce whether it accepts the report’s recommendations. If it does not, it can propose to refer the commission’s findings to the International Court of Justice.
The Commission of Inquiry for Myanmar was only the 14th formed in more than 100 years of ILO history to investigate allegations of serious non-observance of ratified international labor conventions. Such commissions are the highest level of ILO supervisory mechanisms.
