401개의 게시물을 찾았습니다.
The Migrants' Trade Union(MTU) has been conducting a sit-in protest at Hyangrin Church in Seoul's Myeong-dong since July 13 to protest the South Korean government’s unjust crackdown against undocumented migrant workers. Additionally MTU’s President began a hunger strike on July 25.
Here you can read MTU's 4th report, published last Saturday(7.31):
*July 27 (Tuesday)
Many people have been coming to the sit-in protest site to conduct interviews and report on our struggle. Yonhap News, a union researcher from England named Ciaran, a Korean foreign student from Harvard University and Salad TV visited and cover our story. It makes us feel as if we are receiving a lot of attention and encouragement. Kim Yi-chan from the KCTU Special Committee to Fight for the Reinstatement of Dismissed Workers and comrades from KCTU Seoul Regional Council, and Seoul General Union also visited our protest site.
*July 28 (Wednesday)
This was the fourth day of the MTU President’s hunger strike. There were also a lot of interviews on this day. Redian and Labor Today covered our protest. Our president gave a passionate interview, despite being very tired from the hunger strike. We also participated in a meeting of the Seoul Alliance of Irregular Workers Unions and spread the word about our protest. We were also visited by participants in the Migrant Rights Defender and officers from the Hyangrin Church.
*July 29 (Thursday)
Chamsesang(*) and Nepal News conducted interviews. As this was the fifth day of our President’s hunger strike Doctor Choe Gyu-jin from the Alliance of Health and Medical Workers Organizations came and treated him. Doctor Choe told the President that his is very weak and need to be careful. We agreed that the President would have regular check ups. This day we were visited by the Imprisoned Workers Supports Alliance, People’s Solidarity for Social Progress, a Nepalese comrade and Comrades Yuri and Dongyoung. The Incheon Migrants Alliance also carried out street outreach at Dongam Station Plaza in the afternoon.
* July 30 (Friday)
The Director and other comrades from the Seoul Branch of the Railway Workers Union and comrades from the Alliance of Irregular Workers Union, Seoul Branch, the Korean Clerical Workers Union for Solidarity, Hwaija Branch, Kiryeung Electronics Chapter of the Metal Workers Union, the Korean Public Interest Lawyers’Group, Gong-Gam, MWTV, the Morado Team and Student March visited this day.
We also held a candlelight protest calling for an end to the crackdown in front of Myeongdong Cathedral beginning at 7pm. Roughly 150 migrant workers and Korean supporters attended.
Despite it being the sixth day of his hunger strike, MTU’s President gave a powerful speech and received much applause. The Director of KCTU Seoul Regional Council, Lee Jae-wung and Minister Im Bo-ran of Hyangrin Church gave solidarity speeches. “Big Smile”a singing group from KCTU Seoul Regional Council’s Central DistrictCouncil performed and Nepalese comrades spoke and sang “We Shall Overcome.”Members of National Student March did a protest dance and Comrade Somodu of Stop Crackdown Band gave the final performance. We are very grateful to all who attended. It gave great strength to those of us conducting the sit-in protest and other migrant workers.
Participants included: KCTU Chief Vice President Jeong Ui-heon, KCTU Seoul Regional Council Director and other comrades, KCTU Seoul Regional Council, Central District Council Chairperson, Seoul General Union President and other comrades, Korean Public Service Workers Union, Seogyeong Branch, KCTU Special Committee to Fight for the Reinstatement of Dismissed Workers, People’s Solidarity for Social Progress, All Together, Human Rights Foundation Saram, Joint Committee for the Construction of a Socialist Party, Hyangrin Church, National Student March, Korea Exposure and Education Program, Public Interest Lawyers’Group Gong-Gam, Incheon Migrants Alliance, Democratic Workers Alliance, Nanum Culture, Workers Liberation Evictees Alliance, Korean Migrant Workers Human Rights Center, Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights in Korea, Joint Committee with Migrants in Korea, Friends of Asia, Korean Teachers and Education Workers’Union, MWTV, Morado Team, Dasan Human Rights Center, MTU.
* Chamsesang's interview you can read(but only in Korean^^) here!
And finally MTU's facebook you'll find here!
Seoul: Sit-in Struggle against the crackdown in the name of the G-20
The Migrants' Trade Union (MTU) has been conducting a sit-in protest at Hyangrin Church in Myeongdong since July 13 to protest the South Korean government’s unjust crackdown against undocumented migrant workers.
MTU’s President began a hunger strike on July 25.
This act is an earnest call for an end to the criminalization of and repression against undocumented migrants’ rights. We ask for you solidarity and support.
MTU's Third Report (the 2nd you can read here):
* July 21 (Wednesday)
This morning we participated in a press conference calling for cancellation of the layoff of irregular workers by the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation (Nonghyup), which was held in front of the Nonghyup office near Seodaemun Station. As always, Nonghyup still refuses to guarantee the rights of irregular workers. In addition, they fired the Branch Leader of the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation Branch of the Korean Clerical Workers Union for Solidarity, using the end of his contract as an excuse. We showed our solidarity for the workers’ struggle and raised our voices in protest.
In the afternoon, we participated in a mass rally held by KCTU in Jonggak. Despite the heat many workers gathered to protest democratic unionism and show their resolve to continue their struggle in the second half of the year. At this protest we handed out flyers criticizing the crackdown on undocumented migrants and calling for support for our sit-in protest.
* July 23 (Friday)
The President of MTU gave a solidarity speech at the Students’ Alterglobalization Forum. We also made a call for greater attention to and support for the rights of migrant workers during a session migrant workers’ human and labor rights. In the afternoon Filipino workers visited us for counseling and advice. One of the workers was pregnant and hoping to get an extension of the time allowed for finding new work. Her problem was that the Job Center refused to grant her more time because her three-year residence period would soon end. In the evening we participated in a memorial service for Samsung Electronics workers who had died due to industrial accidents and passed out leaflets.
* July 24 (Saturday)
We participated in a conference on Marxism. MTU’s President gave a lecture on the situation of migrant workers. After the lecture there was a lively discussion and participants carried out street outreach and fundraising for our struggle against the crackdown.
In the evening we had a cultural event with MTU members. We gave a report about the sit-in and our future plans. There were also many performances. We learned a Filipino movement song and watched a dance performed by members of the sit-in protest. We also played fun games and generally had a good time.
* July 25 (Sunday)
This was the first day of the MTU President’s hunger strike. We participated in a Rally against the Crackdown on Undocumented Migrant Workers held by Daegu Migrants Solidarity Group, KCTU Northern Gyeongsan Regional Council, Norther Gyeongsan General Union and Gyeongsan Migrant Workers Center.
Despite the hot weather, any migrant workers from Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, the Philippines, China and Indonesia participated. The MTU President gave a solidarity speech in which he noted that we must strengthen solidarity among all workers who are oppressed if we are to win respect for our rights. At the end of the protest participants threw water balloons in a symbolic act. After the protest we had a meeting with migrant workers from the Daegu area. The Daegu migrant workers resolved to carry out various actions to protest the crackdown.
*July 26 (Monday)
This was the 14thday of the sit-in protest and the second day of the President’s hunger strike. During the day roughly 15 lawyers and trainees from the organization Minbyun visited our protest sit and expressed their solidarity. They said they would continue activities to support our struggle. In the afternoon we participated in a protest held by the National Street Vendors Conferdation and gave a solidarity speech.
Several officers from KCTU Seoul Regional Council also visited us, as did comrades from the National Alliance of Irregular Workers Unions and members form the “Do Something to Stop the Crackdown” group.
http://migrant.nodong.net/?document_srl=29684#1
Daegu: Since almost 10 days the concentrated struggle against the "G-20 Crackdown" is still going on!
Last week Japan's so-called "Training Program" for migrant workers - comparable to the S. Korean "ITS"(*), we were fighting against for years... - became an object of special attention by some US media.
Last Wednesday's NYTimes published the following coverage:
"Training Program" Is Said to Exploit Migrant Workers
Six young Chinese women arrived in this historic city three summers ago, among the tens of thousands of apprentices brought to Japan each year on the promise of job training, good pay and a chance at a better life back home.
Instead, the women say, they were subjected to 16-hour workdays assembling cell phones at below the minimum wage, with little training of any sort, all under the auspices of a government-approved “foreign trainee” program that critics call industrial Japan’s dirty secret.
“My head hurt, my throat stung,” said Zhang Yuwei, 23, who operated a machine that printed cell phone keypads, battling fumes that she said made the air so noxious that managers would tell Japanese employees to avoid her work area.
Ms. Zhang says she was let go last month after her employer found that she and five compatriots had complained to a social worker about their work conditions. A Japanese lawyer is now helping the group sue their former employer, seeking back pay and damages totaling $207,000.
Critics say foreign trainees have become an exploited source of cheap labor in a country with one of the world’s most rapidly aging populations and lowest birthrates. All but closed to immigration, Japan faces an acute labor shortage, especially for jobs at the country’s hardscrabble farms or small family-run factories.
“The mistreatment of trainees appears to be widespread,” said Shoichi Ibusuki, a human rights lawyer based in Tokyo.
From across Asia, about 190,000 trainees — migrant workers in their late teens to early 30s — now toil in factories and farms in Japan. They have been brought to the country, in theory, to learn technical expertise under an international aid program started by the Japanese government in the 1990s.
For businesses, the government-sponsored trainee program has offered a loophole to hiring foreign workers. But with little legal protection, the indentured work force is exposed to substandard, sometimes even deadly, working conditions, critics say.
Government records show that at least 127 of the trainees have died since 2005 — or one of about every 2,600 trainees, which experts say is a high death rate for young people who must pass stringent physicals to enter the program. Many deaths involved strokes or heart failure that worker rights groups attribute to the strain of excessive labor.
The Justice Ministry found more than 400 cases of mistreatment of trainees at companies across Japan in 2009, including failing to pay legal wages and exposing trainees to dangerous work conditions. This month, labor inspectors in central Japan ruled that a 31-year-old Chinese trainee, Jiang Xiaodong, had died from heart failure induced by overwork.
Under pressure by human rights groups and a string of court cases, the government has begun to address some of the program’s worst abuses. The United Nations has urged Japan to scrap it altogether.
After one year of training, during which the migrant workers receive subsistence pay below the minimum wage, trainees are allowed to work for two more years in their area of expertise at legal wage levels. But interviews with labor experts and a dozen trainees indicate that the foreign workers seldom achieve those pay rates.
On paper, the promised pay still sounds alluring to the migrant workers. Many are from rural China, where per-capita disposable income can be as low as $750 a year. To secure a spot in the program, would-be trainees pay many times that amount in fees and deposits to local brokers, sometimes putting up their homes as collateral — which can be confiscated if trainees quit early or cause trouble.
The Japan International Training Cooperation Organization, or Jitco, which operates the program, said it was aware some companies had abused the system and that it was taking steps to crack down on the worst cases. The organization plans to ensure that “trainees receive legal protection, and that cases of fraud are eliminated,” Jitco said in a written response to questions.
Ms. Zhang says she paid $8,860 to a broker in her native Hebei Province for a spot in the program. She was assigned to a workshop run by Modex-Alpha, which assembles cellphones sold by Sharp and other electronics makers. Ms. Zhang said her employer demanded her passport and housed her in a cramped apartment with no heat, alongside five other trainees.
In her first year, Ms. Zhang worked eight-hour days and received $660 a month after various deductions, according to her court filing — about $3.77 an hour, or less than half the minimum wage level in Hiroshima. Moreover, all but $170 a month was forcibly withheld by the company as savings, and paid out only after Ms. Zhang pushed the company for the full amount, she said.
In her second year, her monthly wage rose to about $1,510 — or $7.91 an hour, according to her filing. That was still lower than the $8.56 minimum wage for the electronics industry in Hiroshima. And her employers withheld all but $836 a month for her accommodations and other expenses, according to her filing.
And as her wages went up, so did her hours, she said, to as many as 16 a day, five to six days a week. Modex-Alpha declined to comment on Ms. Zhang’s account, citing her lawsuit against the company.
As part of the government’s effort to clean up the program, beginning July 1, minimum wage and other labor protections have for the first time been applied to first-year workers. The government has also banned the confiscating of trainees’ passports.
But experts say it will be hard to change the program’s culture.
Economic strains are also a factor. Although big companies like Toyota and Mazda have moved much of their manufacturing to China to take advantage of low wages there, smaller businesses have found that impossible — and yet are still pressured to drive down costs.
“If these businesses hired Japanese workers, they would have to pay,” said Kimihiro Komatsu, a labor consultant in Hiroshima. “But trainees work for a bare minimum,” he said. “Japan can’t afford to stop.”
For almost three years, Catherine Lopez, 28, a trainee from Cebu, the Philippines, has worked up to 14 hours a day, sometimes six days a week, welding parts at a supplier for the Japanese carmaker Mazda. She receives as little as $1,574 a month, or $7.91 an hour — below the $8.83 minimum wage for auto workers in Hiroshima.
Ms. Lopez says Japanese managers at the supplier, Kajiyama Tekko, routinely hurl verbal abuses at her cohort of six trainees, telling them to follow orders or “swim back to the Philippines.”
“We came to Japan because we want to learn advanced technology,” Ms. Lopez said.
Yukari Takise, a manager at Kajiyama Tekko, denied the claims. “If they don’t like it here,” she said, “they can go home.”
But after inquiries by a reporter for The New York Times, a company that organizes the trainee program in Hiroshima, Ateta Japan, said it had advised Kajiyama Tekko to recalculate the wages it pays foreign trainees and ordered it to grant the vacation days owed to the trainees.
“They may have pushed the trainees too hard,” said Hideki Matsunishi, Ateta’s president. “But you must also feel sympathy for the companies, who are all struggling in this economy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/business/global/21apprentice.html
Related video:
☞ Japan: Training or Exploitation? (CNN, 7.22)
* In South Korea, the Industrial Trainee System (ITS) is a common source of cheap and docile labour. This system is inherently systematic in its exploitation and abuse of migrant workers. The ITS only guarantees migrant workers a three-year legal stay in Korea, but as a trainee not a legal worker. After three years, the 'trainees' must go back to their country. As trainees, they have no 'legal' rights and bargaining power with employers; neither do they receive protection from local unions or state regulatory bodies because they are not 'legitimate' workers, even though they perform the same jobs as regular workers. Migrant workers are mainly employed in small factories as trainees with labour intensive production, they have to perform the so-called 3-D (dirty, dangerous and difficult) jobs with very low payment (around US$ 350 per month), long working hours and no labour rights. They are not allowed to join unions. Despite frequent industrial accidents, they are not entitled to compensation. In fact, the ITS is a kind of modern slavery. It is no wonder that migrant workers (trainees) run away from their work and become undocumented workers. Around 80 percent of all foreign workers remain in South Korea illegal migrants. (Asian Human Rights Commission, Jan. 2004)
Last week MTU (Migrants' Trade Union) started a sit-in struggle against the ongoing crackdown campaign in the name of coming G-20 Summit in Seoul, S. Korea.
We are not criminals! We are not terrorists!
Sit-in protest against crackdown on undocumented
migrant workers in the name of G-20
First Report (by MTU, 7.20)
* In June the South Korean government began a concentrated crackdown on undocumented migrant workers, claiming this measure is necessary to ensure the successful holding of the G20 Summit in November. The government says the crackdown will go on until the end of August. All around the country the Immigration Service, the Ministry of Labor and the police are carrying out raids and stopping people on the streets. Everyday dozens of people suffer because of this inhumane policy of arrest and deportation. As if this is not enough, the government is even forcing detained migrants to pay a fine of up to 2 million won, furthering their troubles. At some immigration offices the fine is being taken out of back wages sent to detained migrant workers without their consent. This is clearly an illegal act. First crackdown, then fines... Forcing this double burden on migrants is a severe form of oppression.
There are also cases of violent treatment. For example, a Chinese migrant worker was beaten after being taken to the office of the Suwon Immigration Service.
To protest against this policy of arrest and deportation, the Migrants' Trade Union began a sit-in protest in Hyang-rin Church in the Myeongdong district on July 13.
Although there are not many of us participating in the sit-in many people, including activists from overseas, came to our opening ceremony to show solidarity and support.
We wish to express our sincere gratitude to all those who participated.
http://migrant.nodong.net/?document_srl=29372#0
*****
Protest against mass crackdown on the undocumented
migrant workers in S. Korea!
Dear friends and allies,
Migrants' Trade Union (MTU) sends you warm greetings and solidarity. We are writing to inform you of very upsetting events taking place in South Korea and to ask for your support.
South Koreais currently preparing to host the G20 Summit in November. The government of Lee Myung-bak is using the upcoming event as an excuse to enforce policies that trample on basic democratic rights. In particular, the Lee administration is using the G20 Summit as a pretext for carrying out a massive crackdown against undocumented migrant workers currently residing in the country.
For many years now, migrant workers have worked in South Korea's small and medium-size factories, playing an important role by supporting South Korean industry. Undocumented migrant workers, who have often lived in Korea longer than their documented colleagues, have become especially accustom to Korean culture and lived together with Korean citizens as part of Korean society.
Despite the fact that the Korean government brings thousands of migrant workers to Korea to fill labor shortages in small and medium-size companies, it will not allow them to legally settle or invite their families to live with them. Refusing to sight the UN Convention on the Protect of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Family, which promises basic protections for migrant workers' human rights, the South Korean government treats migrant workers only as cheap and disposable labor. The government's sole policy towards undocumented migrant workers has been one of viscous raids, detention and deportation, which has lead to countless injuries and deaths. Every year, migrant workers lose their lives in the course of the government's crackdown.
This year, the government is using the G20 Summit as an excuse to openly strengthening the policy of raids, detention and deportation. Since May, the police have been carrying out a 'crackdown on foreigner crime', stopping people on the street for no reason other than that they appear to be foreign. The government has said it plans to get rid of South Korea's 180,000 undocumented migrant workers by the end of August.
In response, labor and social justice organizations are joining forces to oppose this anti-human rights, anti-labor policy, and carry out a united struggle to protect migrant workers' rights.
We ask for your support and solidarity as we move forward with our struggle. Please send letters of protest to the South Korean government expressing your grave concern about its repression against migrant workers. A sample letter is attached for your reference.
Your solidarity is an important part of a wider effort to protect the rights of South Korea's migrant workers. We will work hard to keep you informed of the situation here in Korea. We ask for your sincere attention and support.
July 4th, 2010
A Sample Protest Letter you'll find here!
Guide for Human Rights Violation in Crackdown
Your rights in crackdown
- Ask the Immigration Enforcement officers to show their ID cards
- Ask the officers to show the warrant
- Ask the officers to show Detention Order or Urgent Detention Order (Make it sure that your name, reason of detention, location, and time is written on it)
- You have the right to remain silent and the right to consult the lawyer
Give a call(*) if you experience any of the followings in crackdown
- If you are hit, abused, injured, or insulted by the officers, or if you have any other type of human rights violation
- If the officers keep you in their vehicle for too long
- If you are not given any water or meal in the official vehicle
- If you are not allowed to go to the restroom in the official vehicle
- If the police officer abuses you or violates your human rights while asking for your ID card on the street
- If you are receiving medical treatment or compensation for industrial accident, or if you are a patient, pregnant, or an applicant for refugee status
- If you feel insulted during inspection or investigation
- If your application for consultation on back wages, refusal to return deposit, or industrial accident is rejected
- If you do not have any translation or interpretation service during investigation
- If you are asked to sign the document that you do not understand
- If you are not allowed to see a doctor although you are sick
- If you have any other type of unfair treatment
* Please contact:
02-2285-6068 (Migrants' Trade Union)
02-3672-9470 (Seoul Migrant Workers Center)
Nat'l Human Rights Commission: 1331
面临执法人员搜捕时的应急对策
被搜捕者有如下权利
- 你可以向执行中出入境管理所人员（以下简称为执法人员）要求出示其身份证
- 向他要求出示逮捕证。
- 向他要求出示拘禁令或拘禁证。(应得确认好是否记有你的姓名、拘禁理由、拘禁地点和拘禁期等)
- 你可以行使沉默权，也有权找律师为你辩护。
拘捕过程中是否出现过如下诸类侵权情况(*)
- 在拘捕过程中是否有过如殴打、谩骂、伤害、侮辱等类侵权（人权）行为？
- 是否有过长时间拘禁在搜捕车辆上？
- 是否有过在搜捕车辆中没有得到过必需的饮料或食品的情况？
- 是否有过在搜捕车辆中，被禁止上卫生间。
- 执法人员在街头上向你要求查看你的身份证的过程中是否行使过粗暴的话语等侵权言行?
- 受产灾治疗或处在得赔过程中者、患者或孕妇以及在难民申请中者被拘禁时。
- 在全身搜索或受审过程中是否出现过令人感到侮辱的情况？
- 有无因拖欠工资、抵押金、产灾等问题申请咨询而被拒的情况？
- 受审时有无未得到过翻译服务的情况？
- 有无尚未晓得其内容的证书等材料上被人强求签名的情况？
- 是否遇到过在患病时给医院拒之门外的情况。
- 另外受到各种不适当待遇的情况。
* 要是遇到上述诸类情况中一项就请给电话： 02-3672-9470, 9472 /联系。
Migrants' Trade Union(移民工会) : 02-2285-6068。
国家人权委员会：（不用区号就直接摁）1331申告即可。
Migrant Workers 'News' (#4)
Two extreme conflicting stories about the present situation of migrant workers in Israel...
Migrant workers entered Israel initially in the 1990s to replace Palestinian construction workers and agricultural workers (banned to enter Israel since the beginning of the "2nd Intifada"). There is no official record, and not even an official estimate, of the number of migrant workers in Israel today. The current unofficial estimate is 190,000, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (2009).
TULIP (Trade Unions Linking Israel and Palestine) reported last Friday the following:
Chinese migrant workers sign up to join the union
By all accounts it was an extraordinary scene on the seventh floor of the Histadrut headquarters in Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening.
Hundreds of Chinese construction workers turned up to fill in their forms and join the Israeli union.
Though the forms were in Hebrew, they were given explanatory pages in Chinese.
As one of the more veteran workers put it (speaking with a smattering of Hebrew), “We are here to get strength.”
Many of the workers were accompanied by their employers, who say they have reached the conclusion it would be easier to deal with a single body — the trade union — rather than with lawyers who often take large sums from workers to defend their rights.
The mass sign-up follows the decision several months ago by the Histadrut to begin organizing foreign workers in Israel.
In China, workers are not permitted to join free and independent unions. The unions that exist there are state-controlled and exist solely to ensure the smooth running of the economy. The Israeli unions, on the other hand, are independent and frequently clash with both government and employers.
The Histadrut’s move to organize these Chinese workers and potentially many others stands in sharp contrast to unions in some countries which campaign for the expulsion of foreign workers.
http://www.tuliponline.org/?p=1944
The Israeli (bourgeois) Yedioth Ahronoth published last Wednesday the following nasty report:
"I don't care if they call me racist"
Residents fight kindergarten for children of migrant workers
Residents of south Tel Aviv are working to prevent the opening of a kindergarten for the children of migrant workers and refugees in the Kiryat Shalom neighborhood. The move comes after attempts to prevent apartments from being rented to African refugees, as reported by Ynet last week, and brings tension in the southern parts of the city to boiling point.
The municipality decided to open a new kindergarten due to the persistent rise in the numbers of children among these populations, especially in the area around the New Central Bus Station. While the authorities are investigating the possibility of building new premises in this area, a process that could take up to two years, a temporary solution is slated for Kiryat Shalom – an area populated by veteran Israeli families.
The municipality clarified that Israelis are also welcome to sign up their children in the new kindergarten.
During a tense meeting at the municipality offices on Wednesday, residents expressed a clear demand: The planned kindergarten must be cancelled.
There demand was not met, however, and the residents, including members of parent committees in the area's elementary schools, threatened to hold a demonstration at the kindergarten's gate and physically prevent the children from entering.
City council member Binyamin Babayoff (Shas) who led the campaign against renting apartments to migrant workers, also joined the new campaign against the kindergarten.
"The parents' struggle shows that this is not racism of haredim or the religious population, but real distress which secular people also suffer," he said. "We will continue to shout and oppose until a real solution is found to the issue."
'Pulling us down'
The head of the action committee against the kindergarten, local resident Tzilla Yitzhak, explained their position.
"We are a deprived population, and we don't have our own budget or resources," she said. "We are trying to lift our heads – and now they'll open a kindergarten for an even weaker population? We don't want to become another central bus station where foreign workers wander about everywhere."
"As soon as they open a kindergarten for 35 kids, the families will want to come and live near it, then there'll be foreign workers everywhere," she continued. "These people are actually wretched, they don't have work permits, they bring crime and a bad economic situation to the place they come to, which is already suffering from welfare and economic problems."
Suzy Cohen, also a resident of the neighborhood, promises they'll fight the kindergarten with all their strength. She adds that as long as there are insufficient kindergartens in Kiryat Shalom for the local children, it is not logical to bring in the children of migrant workers.
Cohen also rejects the idea that Israeli children should go to the same kindergarten as these migrant children – "and I don't care if they call me racist," she says. "Our park is full of Sudanese who are looking for a fight, to kill – they've got murderous eyes. They should take them to the north of the city, or to some other city."
The municipality responded: "We are concerned with the welfare of all, and do everything we can to cope with the issue of children of migrant workers and refugees and integrate them into the education system. Thus various options are raised to find a solution for these children while taking residents' needs into account.
"It must be noted that Tel Aviv-Jaffa is the first public authority to take responsibility for the refugee and migrant worker population, and almost the only one who for a decade has been caring for their welfare and rights, including the integration of some 800 kindergarten-age children in municipal education."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3913394,00.html
Related articles:
☞ Israel may deport kids of foreign workers (GlobalPost, 6.30)
☞ Migrant workers in Israel: A contemporary Form of Slavery (fidh, 2003)
Today's Hankyoreh published the following report:
Crackdown on migrant workers escalates prior to G20
The government has continued to receive criticism for the violent tactics used and infringements on human rights
MTU offical, center, speaks during a press conference held to launch “Cat’s Eye”, a group to monitor
human rights infringements against migrant workers during crackdowns in S. Korea, June 30.
The government is strengthening its crackdown on unregistered migrant workers, prior to the G20 summit this November, and has invited censure for human rights abuses and excessive crackdowns. In particular, fines that were exempted after a migrant worker unable to pay the fine committed suicide in 2000 have been re-instituted, and migrant workers caught in the crackdown are being fined and deported. Migrant worker groups have protested that the procedure is double punishment in detaining, forcibly fining and then deporting people for being unregistered migrants.
At the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) in Seoul’s Jung-gu on Wednesday morning, the Joint Committee with Migrants in Korea (JCMK), Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and Migrants’ Trade Union (MTU) launched “Cat’s Eye,” a group to monitor human rights infringements against migrant workers. They plan to conduct activities to monitor human rights abuses during migrant worker crackdowns, which have suddenly shot up in numbers recently.
During the launching ceremony, they also highlighted the violence used by crackdown teams and the imposition of unreasonable fines.
Mr. G, a migrant worker from the Philippines, was caught by immigration officials at a factory in Incheon early last month. Pointing to the wages in his paycheck account, Incheon immigration officials told him to pay a fine, as he was an unregistered migrant. The immigration office deported Mr. G after taking the fine. Migrant worker groups in Daegu said immigration officials forced migrants to pay fines as they would receive back wages, and they also levy fines by forcefully confiscating bank account books and personal possessions such as gold necklaces.
Lee Young, a senior official of JCMK, said in anticipation of the G20 summit, the government is strengthening its crackdown on unregistered migrants, and human rights abuses are occurring frequently from crackdowns at factories, homes, on the street, subway stations and bus terminals, both day and night. He said with general society stressing results rather than human rights in conjunction with the launch of the Lee Myung-bak administration, these kinds of violent crackdowns have been occurring frequently.
During the launching ceremony, Mr. Yoon of Korean-Chinese nationality, 48, claimed an official at Suwon’s immigration office kicked him in the stomach and beat his face and back with handcuffs.
“Since Mr. Yoon hurt the official during a crackdown, the official beat him in his sides in the interrogation room,” said a Justice Ministry official in response.
In September 2008, the Justice Ministry said it would reduce the number of illegal migrant workers by 10 percent from the 220 thousand recorded at the time by 2012. In fact, according to Korea Immigration Service statistics from the end of last year, the number of staff hired to facilitate crackdowns has continued to increase, from 20,455 in 2007 to 30,831 in 2008 and 31,506 in 2009. The Justice Ministry said it is currently conducting its first crackdown from June 7 to July 6, but it has yet to determine exactly how many individuals it has arrested.
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/428394.html
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