CINA

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Migrant Workers Mayday Declaration

 
121 years ago, the workers of the first Mayday protest action in Chicago fought for an 8-hour work day. They have not only sacrificed their liberties, they have also lost their lives in the process. The local workers, the immigrants and the women who have followed them in the struggle, have fought hard for their DIGNITY and we have enjoyed the fruits of those sacrifices.

But after fighting a long and hard fought battle, we have failed to defend that victory. The victories that has been achieved are slowly disintegrating because we have allowed ourselves to be divided by those who rule over us. Because of this failure many workers continue to suffer and lose their lives in the workplace. Up to this day, workers have sacrificed and lost their lives to fight for our DIGNITY as human beings.

 
They have created divisions among us by dividing the regular workers from the irregular workers, locals from migrants, men from women. They have created divisions among nationalities, religion, skin color and gender.

Today, in commemoration of the 121th anniversary of Mayday, we declare that we will move start to put an end to this oppression.

 
● Today, like the immigrants who have joined and lead the workers movement in the US during the first Mayday, we declare that we, the migrants, will build ourselves from the ground up. We will organize ourselves and we will work hard to arm ourselves with the knowledge of our rights. We will rise up and raise our voices so that we may be heard. We will represent ourselves, and we will work to be recognized not as "outsiders or foreigners" but as "workers" and human beings.

● We declare that we, the migrant workers have contributed and continue to contribute so much to the economy and society and that we will no longer allow ourselves to only be seen as disposable labor. We vehemently refuse to be called criminals or job-stealers and we condemn those who accuse us as such. We condemn the crackdown that has caused death and misery to the migrant workers and our families and we condemn the institutions that murder innocent workers for a piece of paper. We will continue to push for the legalization of ALL undocumented workers because it is not only humane, it is also a practical solution to fill in the labor shortage in the industries.

● We declare that our contributions to the country of destination is not measured by where we come from or on projected investments alone, but on how we invest our skills and labor to build up the economy. We stand up to end all forms of discrimination and end unequal treatment among different ethnic groups. We wish to end a system that blatantly gives preferential treatment to Korean ethnic groups from rich nations while at the same time restricting and depriving those who come from poor nations.

● We recognize the contribution of women like Mary Harris Jones and Yi So-sun in achieving past victories and we believe in the power of women and their motivation. The woman's empowerment is essential to achieve our victory as workers. Hand in hand, we will fight against all forms of violence and discrimination towards women. And as workers, men and women will remain equals.

● We declare that the Employment Permit System that restricts the freedom of workers to improve our working conditions, that binds us to our employers, that makes us disposable, this policy and other such similar policies are the invisible chains that enslaves us. Just as the pioneers of the labor movement in the past has struggled to be free of those metal chains, we will also break the invisible chain of slavery that goes by the name of "Employment Permit System".

● As we give honor to those who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom, so should we honor the forebears who have sacrificed their lives to gain dignity for all workers. We demand that all workers be guaranteed the right to commemorate Mayday and be assured of their freedom to participate.

● While the working class are given just enough wages to sustain us for the next workday, the profits of the capitalists continue to grow. They earn profit from their products and steal from their workers. We demand for higher wages where all workers can be assured of a decent standard of living. We call to remove discrimination in wages, where locals, migrants and women have different standards of payment for equal or similar work.

 
● Sanction the registration of the Migrants' Trade Union and stop the oppression on the Union and its leaders!

● Stop the crackdown and deportation and legalize all the undocumented migrant workers!

● Guarantee the complete free travel, stay and employmet of overseas Korean!

● Stop the trafficking of women, discrimination, exploitation and violence against all women including migrants and workers!

● Change Employment Permit System to a Work Permit System!

● Guarantee the Mayday off for all workers!

● Raise the minimum wage and realize equal pay for equal work!

 
We the migrant workers declare unto this 121th Mayday celebration, May 1, 2011

http://migrant.nodong.net/?document_srl=137079#0

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MayDay 2011 in Seoul, S. Korea

1. MTU rally:
 

2. KCTU rally (of course MTU joined it!!):

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...

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 Distress signals from Syria (2011.4.27.afternoon.local times):

 Deraa is Dying!! We, the People of Dara are calling for stopping the planned mass murder! Deraa now is under a blockade were the Security forces bombed water tanks, burned bakeries, broke and stole pharmacies... There is no milk for children and we are starving... The armed forces prevent injuries of having medical treatment... And the reinforcement arrived to Deraa, more than 30 tanks... Please, please be with us, we need your support to stop the the planned massacre...

Related news:
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said today it had collected the names of at least 453 civilians killed during almost six weeks of pro-democracy protests in Syria. Asked who killed them, Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman said: "It does not require a comment. The names we have are from Deraa, Damascus, rural Damascus and the coast." (source: Reuters)

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Today's ('left'-liberal) Hankyoreh published the following (funny??) piece:

"Labor solidarity"
 

Heads of South Korea’s two main umbrella unions, Kim Young-hoon of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), left, and Lee Yong-deuk of the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) shake hands and smile after issuing a joint statement at the Press Center in Seoul, April 25. They called on the Lee Myung-bak administration to change its corporate-oriented labor policy and the new “oppressive” Trade Union Act that went into effect in July last year. They also vowed to stage an all-out fight against the ruling party, including a campaign to vote against the ruling Grand National Party candidates in the by-elections on Wednesday if their demands are not met.

This marks the first time the two umbrella unions, representing South Korea’s labor bloc, cooperated on political issues to publicly denounce the administration together, although they have kept pace with each other on some labor policy issues. The joint statement well reflects their sense of crisis after the controversial revision of Trade Union Act by Lee administration. The law calls for the implementation of the multiple union system and ban on wage payments to full-time unionists.

“The number of full-time unionists in workplaces with less than 300 workers decreased by 25 percent after the revision,” FKTU President Lee said. “The unions in the small and medium size companies have been neutralized because of full-time unionist’s reduction.”

80 percent of the unions under the FKTU are those in the small and medium size companies.

The Lee administration has communicated and compromised only with the FKTU on major labor issues, while excluding the KCTU, perceived as more aggressive. However, the FKTU changed its line as labor circumstances have rapidly deteriorated.


PS: Only three years ago KFTU supported MB's election campaign!!!(^^)
 

Campaign appearance, Dec. 2007: Lee Myung-bak(aka '2MB') and Lee Yong-deuk(KFTU)

Related article:
☞ Umbrella unions join forces (Korea Herald, 4.25)

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Yesterday's Haaretz wrote: If Assad does not use the same murderous force against the protesters that his father Hafez Assad used against tens of thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama 30 years ago, he will not survive...

But today it seems that the Syrian dictator exactly want to smash the protest movement/popular uprising in the same way...

THE DICTATORSHIP STRIKES BACK!

Following weeks of protests, the Syrian regime appears to planning major "security" operation; all land border crossings with neighboring Jordan closed.

Since the early morning hours the Syrian army backed by tanks advance into the restive city of Deraa, in an apparent escalation of a crackdown on the protest movement.
More deaths have been reported in Syria where thousands of troops backed by tanks and heavy armour have swept into the town of Deraa in the south of the country, the large Damascus suburb of Douma and several other cities across the country. "Security" forces also continued a crackdown in the coastal town of Jableh for a second day.

Suhair al-Atassi, a Syrian human rights campaigner, says the Syrian authorities have launched a war against the country's peaceful pro-democracy movement by attacking three cities. Atassi said in a statement sent to Reuters in the early afternoon(local times): "This is a savage war designed to annihilate Syria's democrats. [...] President Bashar al-Assad's intentions have been clear since he came out publicly saying he is 'prepared for war' in his speech on March 30. I am at my home in Dummar suburb of Damascus. Come and arrest me."

Earlier today Reuters reported the following:

Syrian writers issued a declaration on Monday denouncing a bloody crackdown on protesters, a sign of outrage surging through the intellectual elite as violence has escalated dramatically in recent days.

 
Security forces and gunmen loyal to President Bashar Assad stormed the large Damascus suburb of Douma early on Monday, shooting at unarmed civilians and arresting residents, rights campaigners said.

 
"There are injured people. Scores have been arrested. The security are repeating the same pattern in all the centers of the democratic uprising. They want to put down the revolution using the utmost brutality," the rights campaigner told Reuters from Damascus.

 
Residents in the southern town of Deraa, where the protest movement first erupted last month, said security forces backed by armoured vehicles had entered the town overnight and were shooting.

An eyewitness told The Associated Press that he saw at least five corpses after security forces fired on a car... 

 
Also Monday, a senior diplomat in Amman said Syria had closed all its land border crossings with Jordan, following the deployment of Syrian army tanks in Deraa. An official told Reuters the "timing is related to what appears to be a major security operation that is taking place right now".

 
Rights groups say security forces have killed more than 350 civilians since unrest began last month. A third of the victims were killed in the past three days as the scale and breadth of a popular revolt against President Bashar Assad intensified...

 
In some of the latest violence, activists said government troops and gunmen loyal to Assad shot dead at least nine civilians on Sunday in the Mediterranean coastal town of Jabla, where troops deployed following a protest the previous night.

Rights campaigners said they feared Assad's forces were preparing for an attack on the town of Nawa after reports of bulldozers and military vehicles heading there. Thousands of people in the town called for the overthrow of Assad on Sunday at a funeral for protesters killed by security forces.

 
Electricity and communications were cut off in parts of Nawa by the evening and residents, some armed, erected barriers in the streets in preparation to defend against attack.

 
"Long live Syria. Down with Bashar!" mourners chanted during the funeral in Nawa, 25 km north of Deraa.
 

"Leave, leave! The people want the overthrow of the regime."

 
In Banias, south of Jabla, protest leaders said they would cut the main coastal highway unless the siege on Jabla was lifted. Jabla is home to large numbers of members of Assad's Alawite Shi'ite minority who had generally stayed away from protests in the past.

 
Mourning 'martyrs of uprising'

 
Monday's declaration was signed by 102 writers and journalists, in Syria and in exile, representing all the country's main sects, a sign that shock at the violence is crossing Syria's lines of sectarian division.

It called on Syrian intellectuals "who have not broken the barrier of fear to make a clear stand.

 
"We condemn the violent, oppressive practices of the Syrian regime against the protesters and mourn the martyrs of the uprising."

 
Signatories included Alawite figures such as former political prisoner Loay Hussein; female writers Samar Yazbek and Hala Mohammad; Souad Jarrous, correspondent for al-Sharq al-Awsat pan-Arab daily; writer and former political prisoner Yassin al-Haj Saleh and filmmaker Mohammad Ali al-Attassi.

Mansour al-Ali, a prominent Alawite figure from the city of Homs, was arrested in his home city after he spoke out against the shooting of protesters, an activist in Homs said.

 
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4060331,00.html

Related news reports:
☞ Syrian army 'attacks protest city of Deraa' (BBC, 4.25)
☞ Syria sends tanks onto streets (Al-Jazeera, 4.25)
☞ Witnesses: Syrian army crackdown sparks panic (CNN, 4.25)
☞ Syrian tanks and troops move into Deraa (Guardian, 4.25)


 

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The Syrian...

 "Good Friday Massacre"

4.01: The Canadian Labour Congress joins the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in calling on the Syrian authorities to respect fundamental rights and freedoms, including the right to form and join genuine trade unions to represent their interests. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime must immediately stop its violent repression, open a dialogue with its opponents, and allow the development of legitimate civil society organizations.

4.12: London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat reported that the Syrian ruler Bashar Assad expressed his "regrets over the death of protestors during a Sunday anti-regime demonstration"...

4.21: Already 200 demonstators/activists were killed since the beginning of the protests... And Bashir Al-Assad suspended the 'Emegency Law', to "protect the human and political rights of the Syrian people"...

4.22: The STATE TERROR gets worse... Until midnight more than hundred protesters were killed by 'security' forces!!

4.24: Secret police raided homes near Damascus overnight, rights campaigners said today, as popular opposition to authoritarian President Bashar al-Assad mounted following the bloodiest attacks on pro-democracy protesters.

Until last night, 12 people were confirmed dead in the towns of Moadamiya, Douma and Alabadi, and the Damascus suburb of Saqba-Gota, said Wissam Tarif, who heads a Syrian human rights organization. On the previous day, already dubbed Great Friday by some Syrians, 109 people died and many more were injured, he said. According to the German 'left-alternative' newspaper die tageszeitung at least 120 people were killed during the so-called Good Friday Massacre.
The death toll rose to around 350, with scores of missing, since the demonstrations broke out on March 18, rights campaigners said.
 
But the (f*cking) Assad - possibly he'll do whatever he wants - but he'll not be successful...
Today's Haaretz wrote the following: If Assad does not use the same murderous force against the protesters that his father Hafez Assad used against tens of thousands of members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the city of Hama 30 years ago, he will not survive.

Related articles:
☞ 3 prominent Syrians resign in protest against deadly crackdown (WaPo, 4.24)
☞ Assad regime is indeed threatened by Syria protests (Haaretz, 4.24)
☞ Outrage follows Syria security crackdown (Al-Jazeera, 4.23)


 

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S. Korea's (conservative/reactionary) newspaper JoongAng Ilbo reported last week(4.12) - surprisingly quite impartial - about MWTV's activities:

A broadcast voice for local migrant workers

Soe Thi Ha, left, and Soe Moe Thu sing at a fund-raising concert (...) held by Migrant Workers Television

The band Stop Crackdown, consisting of two Burmese and a Korean drummer, shouted the Burmese phrase “Yelele” at a fund-raising concert held by Migrant Workers Television on March 27 to help a Burmese migrant worker who has lived in Korea for 12 years. Aung Naing Win recently went through a 20-hour surgery to remove cancer from his tongue on Feb. 10 and needs more than 20 million won ($18,441) to pay medical costs.

Stop Crackdown’s vocalist and guitar player, U Soe Moe Thu, 36, is a staffer at Migrant Workers TV, a broadcasting company for migrant workers in Korea.

MWTV’s office in central Seoul might be one of the smallest broadcasting stations in Korea. The office is crowded when more than three people enter but the diversity and energy in the office remains high.

But the concert was just one in many events MWTV has. The station plans to hold fund-raising concerts for children of migrant workers, refugees, migrant women and other minority groups in Korea.

“On the surface, the situation of migrant workers seems better than 16 years ago when they started coming to Korea,” said Soe Moe Thu. “However, while the number of ‘doctors,’ by which I mean government-funded programs for Vietnamese brides or migrant workers, has increased, the number of ‘patients,’ or migrant workers suffering in Korea remains the same.”

Aung Tin Tunh, the current executive of MWTV and the director of the Migrant Worker Film Festival (MWFF) has lived in Korea since 1993, and said MWTV aims to broadcast the opinions of migrant workers to the general audience.

“We want to communicate with Korean society,” Aung Tin Tunh said. “That is why we are broadcasting, holding film festivals and running media-education classes.”

Established in December 2004, MWTV started its “Migrant Workers World” program via cable channel RTV, in 2005. MWTV broadcasts news in 11 languages, including Burmese, Nepali, Korean and English, conveying important information about migrant issues that can be helpful for viewers.

There are currently three employees at MWTV, including Aung Tin Tunh and Soe Moe Thu. Volunteers also help out. The MWFF has been held every year since 2006. Last year, it took place in October and about 900 people participated.

“When we were preparing for the Migrant Worker Film Festival last year, I was the only regular worker,” Aung Tin Tunh said. “Though volunteers helped me during the day, I had to stay up late three to four days a week to direct the film festival.”

Though the films shown at MWFF are not like the high-quality movies produced by prominent Korean filmmakers, MWTV says the movies are meaningful because they reflect migrant workers’ attitudes.

The festival also shows the migrants’ diligence because they produce the films in their off time.

“Since there was no studio last year, we had to record in a room where we could hear noise from the playground outside. However, we have a studio this year after presenting what we do in an competition held by the Beautiful Foundation last year.” Soe Moe Thu said.

To encourage more participation from migrant workers, MWTV conducted two months of media workshops in March 2008. Since then, there have been four workshops, with 50 people completing them.

Though most of them can’t work at MWTV as video journalists since they have day jobs, a few of them shoot videos for special events. But making them attend every Sunday was not easy because that is their rest day.

“We called them every Friday evening, Saturday evening and Sunday morning. We treated them more carefully than we do anyone else,” Aung Tin Tunh said.

In the near future, MWTV plans to add more languages on their Web site and to broadcast news for migrant workers from their home countries in their languages. Also, it plans to establish a formal journalism course for people wanting to learn how to become writers, photographers or make videos.

“Working as a reporter for MWTV has enriched my high school years,” said Kim Ha-eun, 20, who has been a reporter for MWTV for two years. “It broadened my perspective of the world. I have learned about situations faced by minorities in Korea and their human rights.”

Said Soe Moe Thu: “We might not enjoy the fruits of our labor during our time contributing toward making a Korea in which everyone is respected, regardless of their ethnicity.”

“But if we keep trying with hope, like planting trees, the next generation will surely benefit from our efforts in the end.”

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2934678

PS:

While this report is kinda O.K., JoongAng Ilbo "forgot" (surprise, surprise!!) to mention that in the past several MWTV activists were hunted, detained and deported!!!