By John Showalter
Sailors from international human rights pariah Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) no longer work in fear aboard the Oriente Challenger due to the efforts of ILWU Canada workers and the Vancouver office of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).

Canadian longshore workers noticed the four Burmese sailors among the 19 crewmembers when the NYK-owned vessel sailed into Vancouver, B.C. January 11 under a Panamanian flag. They immediately notified the ITF’s local office. As a result of negotiations between ITF and NYK Global Bulk, four sailors from the Amalgamated Marine Officers Union of the Philippines (AMOSUP) will replace the four Burmese nationals aboard the vessel.

According to Peter Lahay, the Canadian ILWU-ITF Coordinator, there is a longstanding concern among trade unions and international bodies like the United Nations when foreign labor is sourced from countries that do not afford democratic rights to either their citizens or their workers. The ITF has been fighting the Burmese regime for many years for the rights of seafarers and for the imposition of sanctions on the repressive, military regime in Myanmar. ITF was instrumental in helping Burmese sailors-in-exile establish the Seafarers Union of Burma in Thailand several years ago.

“This company [NYK] has a history of using outsourced labor from nations with un-democratic regimes,” Lahay said, noting that the ITF had previously contacted NYK when three Japanese vessels employed Vietnamese seafarers instead of Filipinos. “When workers like these Burmese are employed they sail without the protection of democratic law and their pay may be diverted to so-called manning agencies back in their home country and distributed amongst corrupt government officials.”

The company also agreed to repatriate the Burmese seafarers and make sure they got their pay.

Aside from the human rights and democratic issues raised by the Oriente Challenger incident, there are broader concerns for Canada. The vessel in question was carrying wheat, and in Canada grain is a highly politicized commodity. Sold by the Canadian Wheat Board, it is essentially a nationalized commodity, so the practices surrounding its distribution are of prime concern to the Canadian government. So Canadian farmers and the government want good ships and have an interest in the conditions aboard them.

The United Nations Security Council is currently considering Article 33 (Burmese Sanctions) and recommending that member states find means for implementing sanctions. The Canadian Parliament is also debating how to strengthen sanctions against the military junta in Burma, and the Canadian Labour Congress is leading nationwide union efforts to impose sanctions.

President Bush mentioned the Burmese situation in his State of the Union address, giving hope to human rights activists that the U.S. would continue to pressure the junta to recognize a democratic government. The current junta lost an election 1990 to Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, but they put her under arrest and have kept her under house arrest ever since.