http://www.humanrights-geneva.info/Child-trafficking-continues,3909
12 December 08 - When Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar in May, leaving close to 140,000 people dead or missing, aid workers feared an increase in child trafficking from the region.
IRIN, Mae Sot - Burmese children have long been trafficked into Bangkok and other urban areas of Thailand where they are forced to sell flowers, beg or work in domestic service, according to World Vision. Others work in agriculture, fishing, construction and the sex industry, the NGO said.
Today they make up the largest proportion of foreign child labour, Thailand’s immigration detention centres report.
However, despite the risks, no increases have been reported, although specialists caution that accurate figures are not available. "We’ve had no reports of an increase in trafficking numbers," Mark Thomas, chief of communications for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Thailand, told IRIN.
"If there were such report[s] I would be cautious about using [them] since there are no accurate figures on the numbers of people who are trafficked on a regular basis prior to the cyclone," he said – a sentiment echoed by aid workers in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, from where so many Burmese enter the country.
"Trafficking happens here every day," said Aye Aye Mar, founder of Social Action for Women, a local NGO providing shelter and training for Burmese women and children.
"We saw one group of about 100 women from the cyclone region brought to Mae Sot by smugglers, but we haven’t seen any cases involving children," said Aye Aye Mar.
While most evidence of Nargis-related trafficking has been anecdotal, one NGO working in Myanmar intervened in seven trafficking cases in June, some involving children.
"Children are at increased risk of being trafficked when they’re separated from their parents or primary caregivers, as was the case with some children during Cyclone Nargis," said one field officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Those risks are exacerbated when families are impoverished and children are forced to undertake more exploitative work to contribute to family livelihood, the aid worker said.
Job seekers
Mae Sot lies on the principal land route into Myanmar through the border town of Myawaddy. It is also a key point on migration and trafficking routes between the two countries, with many Burmese coming to work in the town’s factories and farms.
It has Thailand’s largest Burmese population, estimated at 80,000-plus, nine refugee camps, and probably the largest concentration of Myanmar-focused international and local NGOs in the country.
Aid workers say trafficking works in several ways. Some involves highly visible activities where job brokers in Myanmar distribute posters, fliers and T-shirts advertising overseas work with free flights and high salaries – the average Burmese annual wage is about US$240.
A more usual story is people wanting work contact the brokers.
But with child trafficking, brokers approach poor families directly - offering cash to take their child to a city such as Bangkok to earn money by selling flowers or begging.
Children vulnerable
Many economic migrants fall into the trafficking trap upon arrival in Mae Sot, according to one local NGO.
"Once migrant families arrive here [Mae Sot], their children become increasingly vulnerable to trafficking," a local aid worker, who did not want to be named, said.
"This happens for a couple of reasons. First, their parents work all day and can’t look after them, so they become more visible to the traffickers. Second, the family needs money," she said.
"In poor families it is normal for children to work. So when a broker offers them 1,500 baht [$42.80] per month to take the child to Bangkok to sell flowers, they don’t see it as human trafficking."
But many families see only the first one or two payments from the traffickers, who quickly break off contact. Many never see their children again.
"The children who are trafficked are very young," explained Aye Aye Mar. "They often can’t remember where they come from, and don’t know how to contact their family or village if they manage to run away from the brokers."
Educating migrant families and vulnerable communities within Myanmar about the risk of trafficking, and the tricks and promises employed by brokers, is key to fighting the trade.
This needs to be backed up with capacity-building at an institutional level, noted Ashley Clements, an advocacy officer with World Vision Myanmar.
"Some of the most effective ways that World Vision has been working on trafficking has been the capacity-building of government officials, upgrading their skills to make them more aware of the associated issues and how to address them," he said.
"But if we don’t find solutions to help vulnerable people rebuild their livelihoods and start earning a living, then they will remain much more vulnerable to trafficking," he warned.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Child trafficking continues between Burma and Thailand
The UN must not admit defeat under the military dictators of Burma
http://www.asiantribune.com/?q=node/14671
Sat, 2008-12-13 02:22
By Zin Linn
The Article 9 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) says:"Everyone has the right to liberty: any detention must be lawful and should be used only as a last resort". But the article seems strange to people of Burma. In this country under the military rule, even possessing of a UDHR booklet may send a citizen into jail for several years. To people’s disappointment, it still lacks of human rights education and practices in Burma although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted by the member countries 60 years ago on December 10, 1948.
Thet Zin and Sein Win Maung, respectively, Editor and Manager of the privately-owned Myanmar Nation Journal, were sentenced by a summary court on 28 November in Rangoon under the Printers and Publishers Registration Act for being in possession of dissenting documents, including a UN Special Rapporteur’s Human Rights report on Burma.
A young female journalist who made an effort to cover a protest by a group of victims of Cyclone Nargis and aeach of them in the group was sentenced to 2 years in prison on 14 November. Eint Khaing Oo, 21, was arrested on June 10 when she tried to cover a rare protest in front of the head office of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Rangoon by a group of victims affected by Nargis from South Dagon Township, a new satellite town for the poor. A Rangoon Summary Court made a decree on Eint Khaing Oo of damaging the importance of national security.
Burma’s best-known comedian, Zarganar, and two journalist friends were given additional prison terms by a special court in Rangoon’s Insein Prison on 27 November. His journalist friend and associate in a mission to deliver aid to cyclone victims, Zaw Thet Htwe, who had earlier been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, received a further four years and video-journalist Thant Zin Aung, who had also been sentenced earlier to 15 years imprisonment, received an additional three years and video-journalist Thant Zin Aung, who had also been sentenced earlier to 15 years imprisonment, received an additional three years sentencing.
No one is under any hallucination over how ruthlessly Burma’s military regime is prepared to take action against its challengers who are disenchanted with the military dictatorship. Nonetheless, the sentences handed down on 14 protesters on 11 November 2008 were shockingly harsh. The 14 protesters were found guilty of four counts of using electronic media without permission and were sentenced to 15 years on each count, plus five years for forming an unlawful organization – in total 65 years of imprisonment. The sentences were handed down in delivered long term sentences of imprisonment on several dissidents for their participation in 2007 August-September protest.
The sentences were typical of Burma's military regime which has been ignoring calls by the international community to correct its human rights record. Sentences of imprisonments delivered on the political dissidents also contradict the junta’s claims that its new constitution and procedure for elections in 2010 are proper efforts toward political change.
The release of all political prisoners is a vital step in the process of national reconciliation, but the regime’s stance is backward-looking move. The regime continues to defy the Presidential statement made by the UN Security Council on 11 October 2007, calling for the release of all political prisoners in Burma. The UN Security Council needs to take concrete action to secure their release, without further delay. These recent sentences are some of the harshest punishments handed out by the regime ever since 1988.
At least 215 Burmese political activists have been sentenced in the month of November, according to a report released on 1st December 2008 by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma). The first trial of activists arrested in connection with last year’s uprising in August and September began on 8 October 2007. Since then at least 384 protesters have been sentenced, over half of them in last November, confirming recent reports that the regime plans to speed up the trials of political dissenters.
The ugliest abuse of power is that the junta has been cracking up the existence of justice. The sentences recently handed down ranging from 4 months on charges of ‘contempt of court’ for National League for Democracy (NLD) lawyers U Khin Maung Shein and U Aung Thein, to life imprisonment plus 8 years for Human Rights Defenders and Promoters network founding member U Myint Aye on explosives charges.
Former political prisoner and well-known comedian Zarganar, arrested in connection with his efforts to co-ordinate voluntary relief efforts after May 2-3 Cyclone Nargis, received sentences totaling 59 years. All Burma Monks’ Alliance leader U Gambira, who played a leading role in last year’s Saffron Revolution, was given sentences totaling 68 years. Twenty-three members of the 88 Generation Students Group, who led the protests against fuel price hikes in August last year, were handed sentences totaling 65 years each.
Meanwhile, on 3rd December 2008, a letter signed by 112 former presidents and prime ministers – including former US Presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, former British prime ministers Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher and John Major, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi and former Polish president Lech Walesa - urged U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday to return to Myanmar and press its military junta to free all political prisoners. The letter, an effort led by former prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of Norway, said Ban should make good on the Security Council's call in October 2007 for Myanmar's government to release the prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
Subsequently, on 5th December 2008, a total of 241 parliamentarians from 8 Asian countries have sent a letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urging him to obtain the release of all political prisoners from Myanmar / Burma by 31 December 2008. The letter comes just after a group of 112 former Presidents and Prime Ministers from 50 countries wrote appealing to the Secretary General. Members of Parliament from Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia joined the effort by parliamentarians from Asia who are extremely concerned about the lack of progress in Myanmar’s human rights situation.
“It is important that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon travel to the country himself and engage in serious dialogue with the military regime and impress on them the calls by leaders and lawmakers from Asia and around the world for the release of all political prisoners,” said Kraisak Choonhavan, President of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus, who hosted the petition.
“The suffering of the people must not be allowed to continue and the world can no longer sit idly by and only assist them when there is a devastating natural disaster,” he added, in a separate cover letter to the UN Secretary General.
Despite the fact that Burma has intensified the tempo of its imprisonment of political opponents, human rights defenders, bloggers and journalists, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon met with his “Group of Friends on Myanmar” on 5th December. Afterwards he told the media that he will only go to Burma (Myanmar) if there are some positive growths by the Than Shwe regime, including release of political prisoners.
In direct non-cooperation with the UN, the military regime has not only shown disregard to release political prisoners and take part in meaningful dialogue, but increased twofold the number of political prisoners in excess of 2,100. Although the Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) says that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile, Burma’s military dictators have never taken in consideration of it.
On this 60th Anniversary of the UDHR, the world body should seek concerted efforts from the prestigious organizations and governments to carry out the true meaning of the significant charter. Burma’s human rights problem should be the first task for the UN as an extraordinary example. The UN must not admit defeat under the military dictators of Burma.
Zin Linn: The author, a freelance Burmese journalist, lives in exile. Now he's working at the NCGUB East Office as an information director and is vice-president of Burma Media Association, which is affiliated with the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers.
- Asian Tribune -
Aso's latest stimulus worth ¥23 trillion
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20081213a1.html
Focus of second package is employment issues, corporate finance amid financial crisis
By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer
Prime Minister Taro Aso unveiled a ¥23 trillion stimulus package Friday that will allow up to ¥12 trillion in public funds to be injected into financial institutions, far more than the ¥2 trillion initially planned.
During a news conference Friday evening, Aso added that the next ordinary Diet session will convene Jan. 5, an unusually early date, in order to pass the second extra budget for fiscal 2008 and the budget for fiscal 2009 as soon as possible. The stimulus package will be financed by these budgets.
"The financial crisis triggered by the United States is beginning to affect the actual economy with unusual speed," Aso said. The government "has taken measures to prioritize the security of people's lives and financial stability, but the recession has worsened beyond our imagination."
The focus of the latest stimulus package is on employment issues and corporate financing, Aso said.
The additional measures are aimed at helping protect people's livelihoods amid the global financial crisis and deteriorating job market.
The ¥23 trillion package includes a ¥6 trillion measure for people's livelihoods that Aso had announced in October, an additional ¥1 trillion to help people find or keep jobs, and another ¥1 trillion for local governments so they can provide employment subsidies. Further elaboration was not provided.
Aso also said the government will set aside ¥1 trillion for a new reserve fund for financial emergencies. The Cabinet has agreed "to take bold action with mobility and flexibility in the face of a drastic change in the global economic and financial situation," he said. "I would like to create a new reserve fund to prepare for the unexpected in the future."
The package also includes ¥3 trillion for government-affiliated financial institutions like the state-backed Japan Finance Corporation to buy corporate short-term debt to assist companies in raising capital.
"This great international depression is said to be one in 100 years, and Japan cannot escape this tsunami" phenomenon, Aso said. "But with appropriate measures taken without delay, I think it is possible to keep the damage at a minimum."
Former Myanmar dictator's daughter released from house arrest
http://asia.news.yahoo.com/081213/afp/081213075744asiapacificnews.html
YANGON (AFP) - Officials in Myanmar have released the daughter of the country's former dictator Ne Win after six years under house arrest, police said Saturday.
A senior police official told AFP that Ne Win's favoured daughter Sandar Win, who is now in her 50s, was released late Friday.
"She was released yesterday evening as her detention period was completed," he said, under condition of anonymity.
Sandar Win had been under house arrest at her lakeside home in Myanmar's main city Yangon since 2002 after being convicted on treason charges for plotting a coup.
Her husband Aye Zaw Win and three sons were sentenced to death for the same crime, but remain locked up in Yangon's notorious Insein prison.
Ne Win ruled the country from 1962-88 after ousting Myanmar's first elected post-independence leader U Nu in a coup.
His socialist programme sent the country, once one of Southeast Asia's wealthiest nations, spiralling into poverty. It remains one of the world's poorest nations.
Ne Win resigned in 1988 after a mass uprising against the country's junta, which was crushed in a brutal crackdown that left an estimated 3,000 dead.
He died in December 2002, aged 92, while under house arrest with his daughter.
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