"Like walking a tightrope above sharp points"

(October 2008)

Article published in Union View n°15, also available at http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/VS_Burma_EN.pdf

From the torture of activists to the imprisonment of minors to make their parents’ crack, the military junta resorts to the most abject practices to repress trade unionism.

All the FTUB (1) members living in Burma are well aware of the risks they are taking by striving to improve the lot of workers. Thirty of them are currently in jail, condemned to sentences ranging from five years to life imprisonment. Like other political prisoners, trade unionists are often sent to prisons far from home, making it difficult for their relatives to visit them. Yet, aside from providing prisoners with moral support, these visits are vital, as the only means of providing them with some decent food and medication. In the case of those being beaten or humiliated, visits are also sometimes a way for relatives to bring them a little money to try to halt the ill-treatment, a least for a time.

The latest union member to be sentenced is 50-year-old Khin Maung Cho (also known as Pho Tote). Arrested in September 2008 along with two other trade unionists, Kan Mint and Nyunt

Win, from the A21 soap factory, he was condemned in December, at the end of an unfair trial, to 24 years in prison. He later received an additional eight years for protesting whilst in detention. His colleagues were condemned to ten years’ imprisonment. All three of them were tried on a number of charges including links with exiled groups and sedition, but, as the FTUB explains, they are simply trade union activists. Pho Tote, who had received trade union training in Thailand, had assisted in the formation of unions in industrial zones near Rangoon. In 2007, he also took part in demonstrations against the rise in food prices. Pho Tote was tortured prior to being condemned, being forced to stand tiptoe on sharp objects.

Many trade unionists risk losing their job if their activities are discovered. "We try to give assistance to members in difficulty," explains Eai Shwe Sinn Nyunt, head (acting) of the FTUB Women’s Committee. "We had rented a small house in an industrial zone, where union members who were fired could go and live until they found another job. Unfortunately, the Burmese authorities found out about the house following torture sessions inflicted on workers who had taken part in a May Day activity in 2007 at the ‘American Center’ in Rangoon. The police seized all the trade union materials found in the house and the owner was banned from renting it out to trade unionists."

Released following international pressure

At the beginning of April, the junta once again showed its intolerance towards trade unionism by arresting five them was 17-year-old Htet Yee Mon Eai, the daughter of Eai Shwe Sinn Nyunt, head (acting) of the FTUB Women’s Committee. They were all released ten days later following international pressure led by the ITUC and the ILO, but only after being subjected to torture and humiliations.

"When they came to arrest me at home, they immediately blindfolded me then took me in a vehicle to detention centre no. 6 of the army’s intelligence service," explains Htet Yee Mon Eai. "I was locked in a dark cell and they tried to frighten me whilst I still had the blindfold on by making loud noises, hammering on the metal door, for example. I was kept in that cell for two days. They questioned me over and again about FTUB members, their activities, etc. They also wanted the password to my e-mail address, and told me they had ways of finding it in any case. They barely let me sleep. At times, I could see men looking at me through the small opening in the door of my cell. It was very worrying. Some interrogators also raised their hand, threatening to hit me, but they didn’t do it. The interrogations ceased after two days, I was no longer in darkness and was given some reading... propaganda."

At the beginning of Htet Yee Mon Eai’s time in prison, her torturers convened members of her family to tell them that she would be released if her mother left Thailand and came back to Burma. Her parents, both former political prisoners representatives that had just taken part in the first congress organised by the FTUB, in Thailand. Several other people close to the FTUB were arrested at the same time. Among who have spent numerous years in jail, did not give in to the junta’s odious blackmail. Htet Yee Mon Eai joined them in Thailand shortly after her release.

To the junta’s great despair, the torture, arrests and condemnations are not succeeding in eliminating Burmese trade unionists’ thirst for justice. "We carry out our activities in the greatest of secrecy, like tightrope walkers walking a tightrope stretched above sharp points,"confides Maw (2), an FTUB member in the Rangoon region. "The people from the government are very cruel, they crush you, you and your family, at the slightest hint of protest. The extreme caution we have to deploy slows down our actions, but we are trying to build something solid over the long term, and we will get there."

                                                                           Samuel Grumiau

(1) Federation of Trade Unions - Burma

(2) Assumed name